Obamacare: Driving Doctors Out of Medicine

This is very alarming.  A survey—published in the New England Journal of Medicine!, not a conservative blog site—found that huge numbers of doctors worry they will be forced—or will want—to leave medicine if Obamacare passes.  From the story:

Health Reform and Primary Care Physicians
• 46.3% of primary care physicians (family medicine and internal medicine) feel that the passing of health reform will either force them out of medicine or make them want to leave medicine.

That’s a frightening number. If only 20%-25% of primary care physicians actually leave medicine—half the number projected in the survey—we are in bigger trouble than we can begin to imagine. This survey, if nothing else, should stop the bill in its track.

The study also shows how badly Obamacare supporters have lost the debate among physicians (closely tracking the popular numbers):

Physician Support of Health Reform in General
• 62.7% of physicians feel that health reform is needed but should be implemented in a more targeted, gradual way, as opposed to the sweeping overhaul that is in legislation.
• 28.7% of physicians are in favor of a public option.
• 3.6% of physicians prefer the “status quo” and feel that the U.S. health care system is best “as is.

It’s not too late to turn back. If this debacle passes—particularly if the House tries to pass the Senate Bill without voting on it—it will tear this country into jagged pieces.  But there is still time for sanity to prevail by moderating course and searching for more targeted and broadly supported reforms.

President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader Reid have driven this country to the brink of crisis in their obsession to give the government substantial control over American health care.  The continuing comity of our civil society—and perhaps our ability to find a doctor—may literally be at stake in what happens in the next week.