Posted on 02/16/2015 6:52:56 AM PST by Kaslin
One thing I have often pointed out about the Affordable Care Act (ACA alias Obamacare) is that very few doctors participated in the conceptualization of the legislation. The final bill focuses on expanding Americans’ access to health insurance with a total disregard for increasing the supply of medical professionals or facilities for treatment. Some doctors are directing their efforts to educating their patients and the voting public of what they believe the bill is doing to harm patient care.
To better learn the effects upon doctors and thus their patients of this new law, I had a conference call with a group of them who have formed Our Patients First Pac. Dr. Joel Strom, a dentist from Los Angeles and the principal organizer of the group, arranged for the call with himself and five other doctors from across the country. Strom has been working and organizing in the political arena for over three decades and is the author of Learn to Lead: Finding Success as a Grassroots Political Leader.
The group was formed initially to help a fellow physician, Bill Cassidy, in his successful U.S. Senate election in Louisiana. They expanded their efforts to produce 10 radio spots and a video which were aired in Iowa and New Hampshire. They are now looking forward to further expanding their membership and fundraising toward educating the public about the shortcomings of the ACA.
In a conference call with a group of doctors, we went back to the period prior to the ACA’s passing and the fact that the American Medical Association (AMA) had endorsed the bill. None of the doctors are members of the AMA except for Nikan Khatabi, who practices family medicine in Laguna, CA. Khatabi stated “I am a member of the AMA because advocating for the health of my patients and rights for my colleagues doesn't take a back seat. Either you're at the dinner table or you're on the menu - period.” All of the doctors were strongly against the actions of the AMA regarding Obamacare. They all questioned why if the AMA was at the table they did not abandon the bill when they found out what was in it before it was approved.
Though the AMA guards its membership information, Jane Hughes, an ophthalmologist from San Antonio, TX, stated their inside sources tell them the AMA had just 17 percent of doctors as members prior to the ACA and has now crashed to 11%. John Ammon, an anesthesiologist from Scottsdale, AZ, stated that Docs were not at the table on the plan and that that “the AMA misled the public regarding doctor support for the plan.”
We focused most of our discussion on what the future is bringing to the practice of medicine in the United States. All the doctors agreed that many of their peers are retiring from the profession. That means first of all that Obamacare has had the opposite effect when it comes to the supply of practitioners, causing a shrinking of the pool.
Gerry Gianoli, a neuro-otologist from Covington, LA, has already embraced one direction for doctors. He has been in private practice without accepting any forms of insurance for more than a decade. To make an effective living and not be restrained by the current complications of accepting insurance, many specialists are going this route or providing what is referred to as “concierge services.” Gianoli spoke of how the “mass media has derided doctors and medicine in the United States for the past 20 years.” Instead of celebrating the accomplishments and advancements brought to us by doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and device manufacturers, there has been a concerted effort to deride all for the purpose of creating a single-payer national system.
The rest of the doctors talked about how they are being forced to change their operations. Jeffrey Singer, a general surgeon from Phoenix, Arizona, stated the law is “causing consolidation and impacting patient care.” If doctors are not consolidating their practices with others they are becoming employees of hospitals. Singer stated “Doctors have to become employees to protect themselves because of regulatory requirements.” All the docs agreed with that.
They also are concerned about new Medicare codes coming out that will complicate matters and make doctors subject to Medicare fraud simply because they provide a service to their patients and don’t properly code the procedure. Because of the paperwork requirements they all felt that they are now at the whim of bureaucrats or hospital administrators as opposed to the needs of their patients.
Jane Hughes is the only doctor in the group that has not complied with the medical record computerization and is now subject to fines for any Medicare or Medicaid patient she takes care of in her practice. All the doctors agreed that they are spending so much time completing paperwork instead of tending to patient needs that it is harming their practices.
The big picture of the conversation starts with the fact that although the doctors are desirous of making a good living (they should so that we can attract the top-quality candidates we need to become physicians), these experienced doctors are still focused on why they entered the profession in the first place – patient care. They are being hampered by regulatory requirements causing them to sacrifice their businesses to become part of groups or hospital employees. They are fed up and they are banding together to do something about it.
Our Patients First PAC wants to further enlist their fellow doctors to help alter the political process that has so driven the health care debate. They want to make sure the focus of the system is on patient needs that will be driven by health care professionals and not bureaucrats or Harvard professors with imaginary models.
The doctors are now are stepping up to the plate.
Like America, American medicine and its past excellence
is finished.
Gone forever thanks to the DNC and RomneyCARE/ObamaCARE.
No more will you and your physician surgeon decide.
Instead, the insurance companies and the gov’t and IRS
will decide HOW and if you will be treated.
Doubt it?
Some 10$ medications are already $1800.
And “cure” is not even attempted anymore except
for the EXEMPT .
For non-EXEMPT, the temporary “satisfaction”
of the patient is all that matters.
Only 11% of doctors are members of the A.M.A. very close to the number of labor union members.
The ‘ACA’ or OBAMACARE was never about patient care. It was ALWAYS ONLY ABOUT CONTROL. I was in cancer detection for decades and my field is contracting because of Obamacare. Remember when Obama said he would increase preventative medicine?? TOTAL LIE! Routine cancer screening tests have gone from yearly for pap smears, to a graduated system where, when a woman reaches age 65, a pap will only be covered if the woman has ‘symptoms’. If a woman over 65 has ‘symptoms’ it is generally already too late to help her. But hey, at least she won’t be a burden on the health care system for very long. Colooscopy screenings have gone from every 5 years to every 10 years. More people who won’t be a burden on the health care system for very long after their colon cancer diagnosis. Baseline mammograms were starting at age 40, now only covered at age 50. And then not yearly after that. I guess they are trying to get rid of senior citizens and that will lower overall health care costs. A system that does not value the elderly is a tragedy. Welcome to Obamaland.
Under DeathCARE (not for EXEMPT Congress or Moslems,
of course), early cancer such as prostatic adencocarcinoma
is not treated — even if the patient and physician
want to.
That's because the Affordable Care Act has almost nothing to do with health care.
It's just wealth redistribution. Why get doctors involved in plans for wealth redistribution? Those guys only know stuff about medicine. So their input was not needed.
A day late and a dollar short. Why didn’t they speak up when it mattered?
True. Many prostate cancers are slow growing and, under Obamacare, not worth the expense of treatment. But some are so quick it is rapidly fatal. Our new health care system is only for the average person, not the high risk person. That being said, I remember Dan Fogelberg was going for screening frequently as his father had died of prostate cancer. When he was diagnosed, it was rapidly fatal. He died at 56 years of age. I don’t know the answer to cases like his. Obamacare, when it actually becomes Nationalized, will be all about the money the Government won’t be keeping if it is spent on actual healthcare. And we all know how the Government Monster lives and grows on taxpayer monies.
I should qualify my statement. Our new healthcare system isn’t even for the average patient.....it is for people who don’t ever get sick. Nationalized healthcare only works for people who don’t need the care. Ask any healthy person, paying an extra 10% of their income for Gov’t healthcare, if they like the system. It is been going on so long, they no longer notice their extra taxes and figure, if they ever do get sick, the healthcare will be there for them. So yeah , they think it works great.
I am hoping that the silver lining in this will be the complete abandonment of health insurance my most docs.
Reimbursement maybe but they are right in that doctoring s/b about doctoring. Get your doctor or hospital record visit itemized receipt over to whatever insurance you got your own self.
Then we will see eyes open. The patient is treated now as non-existent, knowing nothing or doing nothing. Nothing pertaining to the bill unless you’re paying some portion of it afterwards thinking oh my it’s just a little compared to the whole thing. The whole price is so frightening you try to put it out of your mind, pay your “little” bill and be grateful.
Should have never been this way. This puts those in the medical field on a pedestal so high and so undeserving. I have doctors who I disobey some times with their “prescriptions” and we have spirited debates and it ends up me saying “fire me doc”. I am in charge LOL
Doctors make very good money on "fee for service" and will fight tooth and nail to block payment for performance, under which a doctor would not necessarily be paid a fee for service, and possibly receive a penalty for service.
The doctors supported the insurance catastrophe prior to ACA because they wanted to normalize their income. Now with ACA, they get the dark side.
One result of the ACA's implementation is that it has accelerated the trend of physicians becoming direct employees of hospitals and health systems. Thus many providers are at least temporarily isolated from income disruption due to changes brought about by the ACA. Of course soon as payment for performance and fee bundling reductions starts hitting the hospitals in earnest, then and only then will the physicians be subject to lower compensation and start to make a fuss.
Re: “The doctors supported the insurance catastrophe prior to ACA because they wanted to normalize their income. Now with ACA, they get the dark side.”
Are you saying the majority of doctors wanted ACA? I am not necessarily doubting you, but I had not heard that before. My own doctor has always been against the ACA.
The ACA was forced down the throat of America. There has NEVER been a majority support for it prior to its passage nor since its passage. The article pointed out that only 17% of doctors are even members of the AMA. How do you know that most doctors wanted this?
No, I don’t think doctors wanted ACA. They wanted insurance. But then a lot of people couldn’t afford or wouldn’t pay for insurance. Insurance, I think it was Ted Kennedy, attached insurance to employment and then the prices of everything went up and were normalized and doctors no longer had to take a dozen eggs or a side of beef for payment. The problem was the people with no insurance got charged double and couldn’t afford it, giving an in to the socialists with their evil ACA.
“Then we will see eyes open. The patient is treated now as non-existent, knowing nothing or doing nothing. Nothing pertaining to the bill unless you’re paying some portion of it afterwards thinking oh my it’s just a little compared to the whole thing. The whole price is so frightening you try to put it out of your mind, pay your “little” bill and be grateful.”
Good golly...nail on the head.
“”Colonoscopy screenings have gone from every 5 years to every 10 years””
13 years ago they were “every 10 years”.....
“”Baseline mammograms were starting at age 40, now only covered at age 50””
They are still covered at age 40.....
10 years ago, colonoscopies were every five years.
According to my doctor, only those with Breast cancer in their families can get a baseline earlier than 50. And IIRC, about 8% of new breast cancers have a familial connection.
It may well depend on a doctor but all anyone can really go by is personal experience...This from 2014:
“”The American Cancer Society recommends that a woman obtain her first baseline mammogram at the age of 40. After that, she should receive a yearly mammogram.””
http://www.medicinenet.com/mammogram/article.htm
As for colonoscopies - I had one in 2003 with the written results to have another one in 10 years which I didn’t do until a doctor asked me in 2014 why I hadn’t done it....
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