The future of American medical care has been looking bleak for some time and looks even bleaker since passage of Obamacare. One casualty of the woeful state of things is our medicare system which, according to this article, is virtually imploding in places like Texas:
Texas doctors are opting out of Medicare at alarming rates, frustrated by reimbursement cuts they say make participation in government-funded care of seniors unaffordable.
Two years after a survey found nearly half of Texas doctors weren't taking some new Medicare patients, new data shows 100 to 200 a year are now ending all involvement with the program. Before 2007, the number of doctors opting out averaged less than a handful a year.
"This new data shows the Medicare system is beginning to implode," said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the Texas Medical Association. "If Congress doesn't fix Medicare soon, there'll be more and more doctors dropping out and Congress' promise to provide medical care to seniors will be broken."
More than 300 doctors have dropped the program in the last two years, including 50 in the first three months of 2010, according to data compiled by the Houston Chronicle. Texas Medical Association officials, who conducted the 2008 survey, said the numbers far exceeded their assumptions.
Then there's this dispiriting forecast:
The new healthcare law will pack 32 million newly insured people into emergency rooms already crammed beyond capacity, according to experts on healthcare facilities.
A chief aim of the new healthcare law was to take the pressure off emergency rooms by mandating that people have insurance coverage. The idea was that if people have insurance, they will go to a doctor rather than putting off care until they faced an emergency.
People who build hospitals, however, say newly insured people will still go to emergency rooms for primary care because they don't have a doctor.
"Everybody expected that one of the initial impacts of reform would be less pressure on emergency departments; it's going to be exactly the opposite over the next four to eight years," said Rich Dallam, a healthcare partner at the architectural firm NBBJ, which designs healthcare facilities.
No medicare for many of the nation's elderly. Already crowded emergency rooms soon to be jammed beyond their capacity. Mr. Obama is certainly living up to his promise of being a transformational president.
RLC
