Posted on 06/27/2011 9:55:42 AM PDT by Kaslin
WASHINGTON — Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.
The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.
Federal officials predict that more than 30 million Americans will gain coverage under the health care law passed last year. “These newly insured Americans will need to seek out new primary care physicians, further exacerbating the already growing problem” of a shortage of such physicians in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a description of the project prepared for the White House.
Plans for the survey have riled many doctors because the secret shoppers will not identify themselves as working for the government.
“I don’t like the idea of the government snooping,” said Dr. Raymond Scalettar, an internist in Washington. “It’s a pernicious practice — Big Brother tactics, which should be opposed.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Someone I know needed an appointment with a pediatric dermatologist, they were told the wait would be 6 weeks at least. Then when learning the patient is an infant, they found a slot to see her next week, but just think how long the wait might be when we have 0bamacare!
Mandates to follow...
DUH. Who wouldn't?
Bump.
this is Atlas shrugged and the “no quitting law” where employees were not allowed to quit OR MOVE AWAY.
I don’t even want to think about it
it will be the same old playbook, class warfare.
rich doctors vs poooor patients.
rich insurance vs poor government
(unions get free pass)
I will become deathcare.
Waste of money, just ask seniors on Medicare how often they are turned down as ‘new patients’.
The ortho clinic I use has 1 back doc who will take Medicare, the other won’t.
Hey doc, wanna keep your licence?
Then you must take Medicare, Medicaid and gov exchanges.
Btw. We are lacking doctors in Detroit, so we’re sending a moving truck to your house and office on Monday.
Retiring? no I dont think so. Want to keep your IRA? Then I suggest you keep your practice open another 6 years.
The biggest joke of Obamacare is yet to come when small - midsized business owners recognize that they can save ~$150-$250,000 by sending all thier employers to the gov exchange programs and kick them off the private insurers.
There will be a massive flood of new “enrollees” into the gov echanges for which the gov will be ill equipped to process the “much greater than expected demand for the gov programs”. There will be a huge bottle neck at that simple entry point.
There’s more, but I’ll leave that for later.
This “journalist” thinks F.P.s are “specialists”? Wow! Of what else are they ignorant?
Law of Unintended Consequences:
Many doctors are on the verge of dropping all Medicaid involvement, and a smaller number are on the fence with Medicare.
This anti-doctor campaign will tip the balance: Most doctors will drop out of Medicaid and an escalating number will opt out of Medicare.
should read : sending all their “employees”
The funnel of Marxism is fully operational.
The American people just don’t know it, but they are sliding without restraint into to the pit of Communism.
Medicine
Cars
Banks
Insurance
Energy
Food
Technology
The Government wants to own all of it, and exempt themselves with private taxpayer funded pensions and waivers, and their union and grivance group buddies will also receive special treatment.
Government is the problem and needs to be neutered.
Me suspicious. Me especially suspicious that this information is being made public because so much of what Zero does is secret.
They are up to something.
Doctors are slaves of the federal government.
They have no right to expect to be paid.
Our family physician is from a former eastern block country. He’s said many times, he’s seen all this before in his former homeland. I’ve been waiting for the practice to close. These sort of tactics may just push our good doctor over the edge and out of medicine. Can’t say that I’d blame him.
Breaking News!!! Government regulation produces unintended consequences.
What a crock.
they will frontload the data to come up with a predetermined result whichporpitiously will underscore some gubmint program.
I am at the doctor right now and as soon as he is done with another patient I am up next.
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