Happy New Year , Ring in Obamacare

Expectations for the Future of Healthcare

1.  Older doctors will retire early fed up with the system. These older doctors feel that the loss of a patient-physician relationship and the burdensome regulations (ie. paperwork) will choke off their ability to provide good care.  In addition, their expenses are increasing with these new regulations.  Add in the projected cuts in reimbursement up to 26%, and their livelihood will be threatened. These cuts could force these doctors out of practice or force them to stop seeing Medicare patients simply because their expenses (which rise yearly) are exceeding their declining reimbursement, which has declined steadily over the past several years already.

 2. Young smart minds will no longer enter the field. This is due to rising debt (average $250,000 after medical school) and severe cuts in reimbursement (yearly threats of 26% cuts to reimbursement).  If young college students realize that they cannot provide for a family despite going to school and training for 14 years, deferring income for all those years, and then being slapped with a $250,000 medical school bill, they will turn to different professions.

 3.  Current younger doctors will become more demoralized by administration and lawmakers dictating how they provide care.  They will feel as if they are increasingly being treated as machines, expecting to provide great care such as answering patient calls at 2am, working 24 hours shifts, doing more procedures for less, and filling out more and more paperwork, all with the threat of getting sued if they don’t perform without making a mistake.  This will produce a high burnout rate and poorer care.