Good Trade

Have you wondered why Democrats are not campaigning on the one accomplishment that they can boast of having achieved since they've been in power, i.e. passage of health care reform? Maybe their reticence is due to their awareness of how unpopular that legislation is with voters. The reason it's unpopular, of course, is that according to every study I've seen it'll result in higher costs to consumers and reduced access to care. One way the "reform" will reduce our access to quality health care is by exacerbating the impending shortage of physicians. Reuters has a report on a recent study that shows this dispiriting outcome to be hovering in the near distance:

The U.S. healthcare reform law will worsen a shortage of physicians as millions of newly insured patients seek care, the Association of American Medical Colleges said on Thursday. The group's Center for Workforce Studies released new estimates that showed shortages would be 50 percent worse in 2015 than forecast.

"While previous projections showed a baseline shortage of 39,600 doctors in 2015, current estimates bring that number closer to 63,000, with a worsening of shortages through 2025," the group said in a statement.

"The United States already was struggling with a critical physician shortage and the problem will only be exacerbated as 32 million Americans acquire health care coverage, and an additional 36 million people enter Medicare."

Doctors will be caught in a squeeze between caps on what they can charge their patients and the increasing cost of their own education. When medicine is no longer as profitable as it used to be fewer people will be attracted to the field. This is simple common sense, but it's apparently arcane enough to have eluded the grasp of the Democrats who voted for the bill.

We can console ourselves, though, with the realization that many more Americans will have medical coverage. They may not be able to find a doctor, but they'll have coverage. That probably seemed to the Democrats who passed this legislation like a good trade.

Cheers.