**Posted by Phineas
Now that were a few months into our glorious new healthcare regime, we’re seeing more and more examples of something many predicted after the law was passed in 2010: you may have coverage, but good luck finding a doctor [1] who takes it:
While open enrollment for coverage under the Affordable Care Act is closed, many of the newly insured are finding they can’t find doctors, landing them into a state described as “medical homelessness.”
Rotacare, a free clinic for the uninsured in Mountain View, is dealing with the problem firsthand.
Mirella Nguyen works at the clinic said staffers dutifully helped uninsured clients sign up for Obamacare so they would no longer need the free clinic.
But months later, the clinic’s former patients are coming back to the clinic begging for help. “They’re coming back to us now and saying I can’t find a doctor, “said Nguyen.
Thinn Ong was thrilled to qualify for a subsidy on the health care exchange. She is paying $200 a month in premiums. But the single mother of two is asking, what for?
“Yeah, I sign it. I got it. But where’s my doctor? Who’s my doctor? I don’t know,” said a frustrated Ong.
Nguyen said the newly insured patients checked the physicians’ lists they were provided and were told they weren’t accepting new patients or they did not participate in the plan.
And Nguyen says – while the free clinic isn’t technically supposed to be treating former patents they signed up for insurance, they can’t in good faith turn them away.
Dr. Kevin Grumbach of UCSF called the phenomenon “medical homelessness,” where patients are caught adrift in a system woefully short of primary care doctors.
(…)
Meanwhile, the sick and insured can’t get appointments.
“What good is coverage if you can’t use it?” Nguyen said.
(Emphasis added)
“Medical homelessness.” That’s a wonderful term for the chaos caused by Obamacare in provider networks. Not only do you discover that you can’t see the doctor you used to see, the new doctors you try to see may not take your health plan because it either doesn’t reimburse enough, or the regulations are too burdensome. Let’s review a few examples:
- Thousands of elderly people [2] are losing their insurance in New York. Will they find another doctor who takes Obamacare?
- Need cancer treatment? Good luck if that top-shelf hospital that used to be on your old plan isn’t on your new one [3].
- Thinn Ong in the story above isn’t the first Californian to have doctors turn her away [4]. Maybe she could compare notes with Andrea Redamonti [5].
- And one woman has (to date) gone through 96 physicians [6] without finding one who would accept O-care Medicare coverage.
And there are a lot more in the archives [7].
Obamacare is an anti-constitutional monstrosity [8] that’s not only not helping the people it was meant to help —the previously uninsured [9]— but it’s actively hurting others [10]. There’s only one thing to do with it: repeal it and then burn the legislation and scatter the ashes to the four winds.
And then replace it with something that will work [11].
Via Rick Moran [12], who has lots more.
PS: And don’t forget to vote out the idiots who passed it.
(Crossposted at Public Secrets [13])