Jay Parkinson warns that Obama needs to work on the primary care supply side first before opening up coverage. Look what’s happening in Massachusetts. Much the same has been said here, but it bears repeating:
Massachusetts got this bright idea as well a few years back. They made being uninsured illegal and punishable by massive fines. So they added hundreds of thousands of new people to the insurance pool. Then wait times for a doctor went up to an average 52 days. People were mandated to purchase something for $600 dollars a month that they couldn’t even use! They didn’t fix the supply side of primary care doctors before they fixed the patient demand side. And not a single primary care doc at Harvard is accepting new patients right now.And now, 2% of all doctors this year are planning on going into primary care. Obama, wake up. Expanding coverage without encouraging more doctors to go into primary care will worsen our crisis. We’ll all be paying $500 for a visit to an Otolaryngolist for a simple little ear infection, instead of $100 for a visit to a pediatrician.
