Newspaper: Obamacare will create doctor shortage

Obamacare proponents promise to provide health care insurance for 30 million more Americans while reducing costs. A new survey finds that up 45 percent of doctors nationwide would consider leaving the profession if Obamacare becomes the law of the land. Sow how to you provide health care coverage to more people with fewer doctors? Can't wait to hear what Obama has to say about that one.

From Investor's Business Daily:

We were harshly criticized last September for an IBD/TIPP Poll that showed 45% of doctors would consider leaving medicine if a health care takeover passed. A new poll has vindicated our findings.

Our questionnaire went out Aug. 28 to some 25,600 doctors nationwide. Of that substantial sample, we got 1,476 responses. One hundred of those were retired, leaving 1,376.

At the time, virtually no one had stopped to ask doctors how they felt about the medical takeover being discussed in Congress. We thought it was vital to ask them, since any overhaul would rise or fall on its implementation by doctors themselves.

To say we were stunned with the results is an understatement.

Of the physicians queried, 45% said they'd consider closing their practice or retiring early if the overhaul then being considered were enacted. Also, 65% said they opposed the government's attempts at taking over the health care system. Just 33% supported it.

Given that the White House and Congress both promised then — as they do now — to provide health care coverage for 31 million new patients while at the same time cutting costs from the $2.4 trillion a year we spend on medical care, we thought it was important to reveal that doctors wouldn't go along with it.

What we found was that of the 800,000 physicians practicing in the U.S. in 2006, as many as 360,000 might leave the profession. So with the proposed overhaul, we'd be trying to cover 31 million more patients with up to 45% fewer doctors.

Impossible. It can't be done.

Read the full editorial at the newspaper's Web site.