More than four years after becoming law,
Obamacare is getting low marks from many doctors.
In a
survey by the Physician’s Foundation that was emailed to
physicians in the American Medical Association’s database, almost
half of doctors—46 percent—gave the federal health law a “D” or an
“F.” Only a quarter of the physicians who responded gave the
program an “A” or a “B” grade.
About 20,000 doctors responded to the survey.
Obamacare wasn’t the only federal health policy to score poorly
with doctors in the survey. About 85 percent said they have
implemented an electronic medical records system, but 46 percent
say it has “detracted from their efficiency” while only 24 percent
say it has made them more efficient. The 2009 stimulus
included some $20 billion in incentive funding meant to
encourage health providers to install electronic health records
systems.
More than a third of the doctors in the survey—38 percent— say
they have either limited the number of Medicaid patients they see
or stopped seeing Medicaid patients entirely. Medicaid pays
significantly lower rates to providers than other types of health
coverage.
Half of the physicians who responded said they believe that the
implementation of ICD-10, the complex new federally mandated
medical coding system, will “cause severe administrative problems
in their practices.”
A little more than a quarter of doctors in the survey are now
involved in coordinate care programs like the Accountable Care
Organizations (ACOs) set up under Obamacare, but just 13 percent
say they think ACOs will “enhance quality and decrease
costs.”
Some of this, no doubt, is just health providers not wanting to
adjust their ways or give up autonomy. But I suspect
that there’s more going on here than just doctors grumbling about
change. What you see, fairly consistently, in these responses, is
not just a lack of enthusiasm or a personal dislike for the way
health policy is going, but a belief amongst a lot of doctors that
recent policy changes won’t work, and a sense that health care
providers have been left out of the reform process.
(Via
Phil Klein at The Washington Examiner.)
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