Doctors in the News: Repeal Obamacare for Better Choices in Healthcare

Everywhere you turn, Obamacare is in the news, some good and some bad but always there making the headlines. According to the International Business Times, doctors are saying repeal Obamacare but they likewise urge against replacing it. Why is this and what would be the outcome for more than 40 million Americans who signed onto Affordable Care plans, many because they were forced to by law? With a shortage of qualified medical professionals already taking front and center stage in the news, what will this latest news mean in terms of offering acceptable levels of healthcare to the nation?

Is the Shortage of Doctors and Nurses an Even Larger Crisis?

Before taking a glance at what doctors are saying about Obamacare, let’s take a quick look at a very real, and perhaps much larger problem looming on the horizon. It is no secret that the nation faces a severe, almost critical, shortage of qualified medical personnel in the years to come. While more and more nurses are transitioning from an MSN to DNP online, that will perhaps ease the shortage of clinicians only a small bit. It is imperative to understand that America will be short by at least 90,000 doctors within the next decade, so although doctor of nurse practitioner programs will help, they won’t alleviate it altogether.

A Brief Glance at Inherent Issues in ACA Legislation

While it appears that only doctors were queried in the IBT piece, those with a nurse practitioner doctorate degree will probably agree, in part. Remember, NPs typically charge less for comparable services, so they are not going to be in jeopardy to the same extent as M.D.s. Even so, the reason why doctors are opposed to the Affordable Care Act is that the entire bit of legislation was overly ambitious and the only entities who could have made a profit, didn’t. That would be the insurance companies who spent millions lobbying Washington to get the bill through Congress back when Obama first took office.

Insurance companies should have benefitted, but something went wrong and they began losing money as well. Part of the problem was the inclusive level of coverage and part of it was the sheer numbers of people who were required to buy in or be penalized. If you have insurance, why not use it? And, that’s just what they did, costing major insurers billions they hadn’t counted on paying out.

Conclusion You Can Infer: Why Doctors Are Saying “Repeal Obamacare”

So then, you can infer from this that doctors are asking for a repeal of Obamacare on a number of levels. Primarily, it would be the cost associated with coverage and the fact that increasing numbers of insurance companies are bailing out of the program. Secondly, ACA limits don’t offer doctors the recompense they feel services deserve, and finally, the number of those with coverage far surpasses the number of doctors required to provide services. From what we have been reading in the news, this is why doctors say repeal and don’t replace. Even the best DNP programs can’t put out enough nurse practitioners to fill the void, so until all these issues are resolved, it looks like a repeal vote is in the wind.