Obamacare closing more and more private practices....Physicians are leaving small communities

Many, many, many physicians have had to close their private practices, and forced to join hospital owned offices. Either that or find a job not in medicine! Gee…thanks Obamacare….What ever happened to “you can keep your Doctor”? He (Obama) knew that it was a load of crap….and so did all the rest of us. The sooner Obamacare is scrapped the better….just another closed-end, expensive, waste of time and money government program that only Socialist covet!

Alaska Physician Shuts Down Practice, Citing Obamacare

From the Daily Caller

9:39 PM 09/21/2014

Sarah Hurtubise Reporter

After a long list of Obamacare failures in Alaska, one physician is shutting down his decades-old practice, charging that the health-care law and other federal programs are “unsustainable” for practicing doctors.

Dr. William Wennen, a plastic surgeon, is closing his Fairbanks practice after 38 years of working in the state. Dr. Wennen blames federal health insurance programs, citing Obamacare, Medicaid and Medicare, for shutting down his practice.

“It is an unsustainable system,” Dr. Wennen wrote to his customers in a letter obtained by The Daily Caller. “I am personally writing off upwards of three quarters of a million dollars annually in free/uncompensated care.”

“My reasons for closing down the office are simply economic,” Wennen wrote. “The governmental agencies that are supplying ‘medical insurance’ to the elderly, the disadvantaged, the indigent and the sick, injured, or disabled have placed an unrealistically low value of worth on physician’s services.”

Medicaid typically has the lowest physician reimbursements of any federal program. Doctors have been protesting pay cuts for services through Medicaid and Medicare. It’s increasingly difficult for customers to actually find health care providers that accept the coverage — especially in private practice, where doctors are more hard-pressed to be profitable than at big-budget hospitals. 

 “Within the last month, Fairbanks has lost three other much respected physicians for the same or similar reasons,” Dr. Wennen wrote. ”I am not the first and certainly will not be the last of the exodus of physicians from active practice because of all of this.”

Dr. Wennen is far from alone in his stark opposition to the health-care law. A recent survey from the Physicians Foundation found that 46 percent of doctors in the U.S. would give Obamacare a “D” or an “F,” the Washington Examiner reported.

For his part, Wennen hopes to continue providing medical care through other avenues, but can no longer afford to keep his practice. Other doctors nationwide have simply refused to accept coverage provided by federal agencies — even private coverage sold through Obamacare exchanges.