Doctor shortage - TheHill.com: "Joseph Stubbs, president of the American College of Physicians — the second-largest doctors’ group in the country — confirms that “the supply of doctors just won’t be there” for the 30 million new patients President Barack Obama wants to cover. Noting that the doctor shortage is “already a catastrophic crisis,” Stubbs noted that underserved areas in the U.S. currently need almost 17,000 new primary care physicians even before Obama’s proposals are enacted.
In the meantime, according to Bloomberg News, a 2009 survey by Merritt Hawkins & Associates, a recruiting and research firm in Irving, Texas, found that “the average waiting time to see a family-medicine doctor in Boston … is 63 days, the most among the 15 cities” surveyed. By comparison, in Miami, it was only seven days. The study noted that Boston’s longer wait was “driven in part by the healthcare reform initiative” passed in 2006 in Massachusetts, upon which the Obama program is modeled. Bloomberg reported that “as many as half of doctors in the state have closed their practices to new patients, forcing many of the newly insured to turn to emergency rooms for care.”"
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