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.
