Rising costs drive doctors, nurses out of practice, does not fix problems of system
In theory, the Affordable Care Act under President Barack Obama’s administration, also known as Obamacare, is supposed to reduce insurance costs, or at the very least keep them reasonable, and expand the universe of people paying into it to offset the costs of the people who consume it the most. In theory it’s plausible, but in practice it simply doesn’t work. The Obamacare system is essentially a pyramid scheme, much like Social Security. (Social Security doesn’t work because there are not enough people paying into it to offset the number of seniors who need the program, and Obamacare works in almost the same way.)
The problem with Obamacare is that it misses the mark when it comes to what drives health care costs in America. Fundamentally, we do not have enough doctors, nurses and physician’s assistants to meet demands in today’s medical field. In a market, when demand increases for a good and supply decreases, costs naturally rise. The only way to alleviate a cost problem is to increase supply. When you artificially drive down cost, and you increase demand, it means the suppliers in the market might exit the market because they can’t recoup their costs. In the case of health care, the “suppliers” are these doctors, nurses and health care workers. Rather than address this problem, Obamacare exacerbates other contributing factors.
The first factor left unaddressed is the cost of medical school. Obamacare does nothing to keep down the rising costs of medical school. Doctors have huge loans they have to pay back among other expenses, such as malpractice insurance fees. However, none of these costs to doctors are fixed under Obamacare. As a nation we have done nothing to solve the problem of skyrocketing malpractice insurance rates, and as a result, there will be fewer doctors seeing patients as they become more wary of incurring costs.
The irony lies in the fact that the goal of Obamacare is to allow more people to see these doctors. However, time is a finite resource, so the only way these doctors can see more patients is by seeing them for less time. Less time with the patients increases the potential for mistakes, thus driving up doctors’ liabilities even further.
Obamacare doesn’t fix the problem, but instead puts more people into a government-mandated bureaucracy. Anyone can “ensure” every person in America by waving a magic wand. But what if you can’t find a doctor to see you? Or what if the doctor is so overbooked that he or she can’t see you for six months? In those cases, the insurance would be worthless.
What we have is not a crisis of health insurance, but rather a crisis of health care supply. By not addressing these problems with supply, Obamacare is driving doctors and nurses out of practice and the American people ultimately lose.