That Big Elephant In The Room

Curiously missing from this Roanoke Times editorial lamenting the looming loss of physicians in the Commonwealth of Virginia are two words - OBAMACARE and MEDICARE.  From "Doctor shortage coming to Virginia":

Virginia is trying to prepare for upheavals in the health care system that are coming at the state in that great demographic wave known as the baby boomers.

It's none too soon to be looking for policy strategies to head off a significant shortage of doctors as the boomers retire from the medical field just as they and their aging contemporaries need more health care.

Add the greater accessibility that federal health care reform will afford Virginia's uninsured and underinsured middle class and working poor, should they be allowed to benefit from it, and a coming doctor shortage looks all the more critical.

The author of this piece of work blames the pending shortage on the aging of the physician population and the reimbursement tables used by the state in Medicaid transactions. While both are indeed factors to consider, there's another, even greater, looming large:

OBAMACARE.

Study: ObamaCare will make doctor shortage 50% worse by 2015
By Ed Morriseey

[A] new study by the Association of American Medical Colleges and reported by Reuters shows that the bill will have a big impact on an expected shortage of physicians over the next few years — by amplifying it:

"The U.S. healthcare reform law will worsen a shortage of physicians as millions of newly insured patients seek care, the Association of American Medical Colleges said on Thursday.

"The group’s Center for Workforce Studies released new estimates that showed shortages would be 50 percent worse in 2015 than forecast.

"'While previous projections showed a baseline shortage of 39,600 doctors in 2015, current estimates bring that number closer to 63,000, with a worsening of shortages through 2025,' the group said in a statement."

The artificial cap on reimbursements — a form of price-fixing — will be the main culprit. With education becoming more and more expensive, physicians need to recoup their investment in it from plying their trade. Unfortunately, government reimbursement schedules will force payments down through the entire industry, making specializations in areas that have Medicare or Medicaid implications much less attractive. Those who can choose specialties will be more likely to go into cosmetic surgery, Lasik, and other areas where third-party payer structures are not an issue. [link] [emphasis mine]

I wonder why the Times mentioned Medicaid and not Medicare?

Could it be because Barack Obama and his federal government are only indirectly involved with the former (with the primary remunerator being Bob McDonnell), but directly responsible for the latter?

Regardless, the feds are involved in both.  And the man at the top has seen to it that both medical assistance programs will starve doctors out of their profession.  To the tune of tens of thousands.

A question:  How can the Roanoke Times applaud ObamaCare and, at the same time, criticize that which is oozing from it?