‘Shocker’ — Doctors Rejecting Obamacare Patients

By Tad Cronn

Saying “told you so” isn’t nearly as fun as it should be when it’s regarding a mess that should have easily been avoided.

But thanks to blockhead dogmatists on the Left, the entire country’s been inflicted with Obamacare, the Socialist-in-Chief’s signature legislation that we just had to vote for before we could find out what was in it.

The latest “discovery” about Obamacare is yet another conservative prophecy fulfilled.

While millions have signed up for insurance through the Obamacare exchanges, a lot of newly insured enrollees are finding it difficult to locate a doctor who will take the plans, according to an article published by NPR and Kaiser Health News.

That’s because the reimbursement rates to doctors for their services are much lower than they could get from a private insurer and nearly as low as Medicare, which many doctors try to avoid.

It’s not just a case of greedy doctors, either. Private practices are not just a community service, they are a business, and the doctors in charge have to be able to pay their staff, restock the shelves and pay the power bill. After all that, they hope to have enough money to take care of their own families, just like any other hard-working American.

All of that means that there is a bottom line that has to be served even by doctors, and if an insurance plan isn’t meeting a doctor’s business needs, the patient who has that plan doesn’t get seen or has to expect corners to be cut on care.

Dr. Doug Gerard told NPR, “I cannot accept a plan [in which] potentially commercial-type reimbursement rates were now going to be reimbursed at Medicare rates. You have to maintain a certain mix in private practice between the low reimbursers and the high reimbursers to be able to keep the lights on.”

In Gerard’s home state of Connecticut, there are three Affordable Care Act plans available, but Gerard only accepts one as the other two have reimbursement rates that are too low.

In other states, the story is similar. That has ACA officials worried because as more doctors reject Obamacare plans and more people are forced by government rules to enroll in those plans, a lot of people are going to find they theoretically have coverage but they don’t have access to actual care.

As predicted by many critics long before the ACA was passed in the dead of night, Obamacare is effectively creating a shortage of doctors.

That in turn could cause a broader problem.

“I think it could lead potentially to this kind of distinction that there are these different tiers of quality of care,” said Kevin Counihan, who runs  Connecticut’s insurance exchange.

So government involvement in health care is leading to less access and lower quality of medical care. Gee, what next? Death panels that ration care based on costs? Oh … wait a minute. …