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The following article is an except form pages 78-81 of my book The Conscience of a Young Conservative. If you enjoy, free PDF copies are available through Liberty.me, and print copies are available on Amazon.  When the conditions that a doctor must work in worsen, it should come to no surprise that we see less doctors. In the 1970’s, before Canada’s government takeover of medicine, they ranked second out of 28 countries on doctors per thousand people. Now, they rank 24th.[1] Even though Massachusetts attempted universal coverage just recently (in 2006), they are already experiencing doctor shortages in dermatology, general surgery, emergency medicine, and other areas.[2] All these problems have arisen despite Massachusetts ranking #1 in doctors per 100,000 residents, with 462 doctors per 100,000 in 2006.[3] While Massachusetts has retained its #1 ranking for now, their supply of doctors has now begun to lag behind demand. One hospital reported 1,600 people on their waiting list in 2008 and said it takes around 4 months for someone to have their first appointment.[4] American programs that resemble socialized medicine in other countries – such as Medicare and Medicaid – already suffer from something similar to this problem of physician reduction. Since private insurers pay physicians more than Medicare and Medicaid, patients on these government programs have trouble finding physicians.. In Michigan, the number of doctors willing to see Medicaid patients has declined from 88 percent in 1999 to 64 percent in 2005. In Ohio, only 28 percent of doctors surveyed by the Ohio Coalition of Primary Care Physicians said they would continue to provide care to Medicaid patients on an unlimited basis without an increase in pay.[5] Like Michigan, Ohio also has followed a downward trend in doctors seeing Medicaid patients, with a decline from 93 percent in 1998 to 63 percent in 2002.[6] Both programs cause doctors to work at a loss in some cases. One doctor at Hurley Medical Center named Dr. Mukkamala estimated that is cost him around $29 for every X-ray he takes. Medicaid pays him $20 per X-ray, Medicare pays $30, and insurers such as Blue Cross pay $33.[7] The Ohio Coalition study cited previously also found that 79 percent of doctors do not receive a large enough Medicaid reimbursement to cover their office overhead.[8] Since many of the same health care “experts” that designed RomneyCare in Massachusetts also designed ObamaCare, there are more areas where these plans are similar than different. What has caused problems at a statewide level is bound to cause problems at the national level. Even prior to the passing of ObamaCare, many polls showed a reduction in the number of physicians to be inevitable. A survey of 270,000 primary care physicians in 2008 found that 76 percent already described themselves as “overextended or overworked.” Because of this, 13 percent plan to look for a job that does not involve patient care, 30 percent plan to work part time or see fewer patients, and 11 percent plan on retiring.[9] A survey conducted by the Physicians’ Foundation nine months after ObamaCare was passed showed that 40 percent of physicians said they would drop out of patient care within the next 3 years by retiring, seeking a non-clinical job within healthcare, or seeking a job not related to healthcare. [10]  I seriously doubt that someone who spends nearly a decade of their life in university obtaining a medical degree would truly seek employment in a non-medical field, but it at least it shows ObamaCare to be widely unpopular among physicians. A study by the Association of American Medical Colleges placed a number on the size of the predicted shortages. In summary, they found that by 2015 the predicted doctor shortage would be 50 percent worse with ObamaCare than without it.[11] People can rationally argue that many of these doctors are bluffing, but there are other fields that doctors can migrate to. These include specialties such as cosmetic surgery, Lasik, and others where the government does not involve itself. Since the ObamaCare bill would place a cap on reimbursements, doctors would rationally flee to these other specialties.[12] In addition to physician reduction, many other problems exist. Fifty-nine percent said that ObamaCare would cause them to spend less time with patients, and 87 percent said they would have to close or restrict their practices to Medicare patients. Overall, 67 percent of physicians surveyed view the ObamaCare bill negatively.[13] ObamaCare is largely unpopular among physicians, who tend to know best what is in their best interests. [1] Esmail, Nadeem, and Michael Walker. “How Good is Canadian Health Care? The Heartland Institute, 2004. . [2] Mitchell, Jennifer. “Doctor Shortage in Massachusetts, Some Wait 53 Days to See Doctor.” 29 Oct. 2010. . [3] “American Medical Association, Chicago, IL, Physicians Characteristics and Distribution in the U.S., annual (copyright).” Table 156, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2009. [4] Brown, Karen. “Mass. Health Care Reform Reveals Doctor Shortage.” NPR, 30 Nov. 2008.  . [5] “2002 Ohio Physician Medicaid Survey Key Findings.” The Ohio Coalition of Primary Care Physicians and the Ohio State Medical Association, Jan. 2003. . [6] Ibid [7] Fuhrmans, Vanessa. “Note to Medicaid Patients: The Doctor Won’t See You.” 19 July 2007. . [8] “2002 Ohio Physician Medicaid Survey Key Findings.” [9] “Obamacare Won?t Survive Coming Doctor Shortage.” The Washington Examiner, 28 June 2009. . [10] “Nation?s Frontline Physicians Unhappy With Health Care Reform Measures.” Physicians? Foundation, 18 Nov. 2010.  . [11] “Health Reform to Worsen Doctor Shortage: Group.” Ed. Peter Cooney. 30 Sept. 2010. . [12] Morrissey, Ed. “Study: ObamaCare Will Make Doctor Shortage 50% Worse by 2015.” HotAir, 1 Oct. 2010.  . [13] Nations Frontline Physicians Unhappy With Health Care Reform Measures.

Report: Mega-Quake Would Destroy Big Portion Of Pacific Northwest - First Warning - Shepard Smith Reporting The New York Quotes A FEMA Official: Everything W...

Absolutely shocking suppressed documentary about the full blown drug smuggling, money laundering, womanizing, murder, political favors, killing anybody who t...

Officials say Haitian man now accused of woman's murder served a long prison term for a prior violent felony, and was then released to U.S. Immigration and Customs, but was never deported

Humberto Fontova,  The human rights activist mentioned in this column title is also a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner. More fascinatingly still,

www.tedcruz.org

Donald Trump might finally have crossed the line. Appearing on Saturday at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, the real estate mogul took his running feud with Arizona Sen. John McCain to a new level. “He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”...

D.L. Hughley thinks Caitlyn Jenner "looks like every P.E. teacher I ever had," and says she wouldn't have been his choice to receive the ESPYs ' Arthur Ashe Courage Award simply because she "put on a dress."

Supernova levels of "gaslighting" at work.   It sure would be problematic for the administration that has done little (ie. nothing) to combat growing islamic extremism if ISIS was reflected as the ...

New York (AFP) - New York's Empire State Building was lit in green late Friday to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.

A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most loc...

Share1 Tweet1 +10 Pin0 Share0TOTAL SHARES 2CISBLOG It?s frustratingly common: The mainstream media discusses a social problem obviously impacted by immigration — overcrowding, low wages, increasing poverty, etc. — but assiduously avoids any mention of immigration. To much of the media, using the word immigration in the context of any social problem has become a taboo, roughly ? Continue reading Immigration: Summer Employment and the Problem That Must Not Be Named

The following article is an except form pages 62-64 of my book The Conscience of a Young Conservative. If you enjoy, free PDF copies are available through Liberty.me, and print copies are available on Amazon.  A 2007 study conducted by Dr. David Himmelstein and researchers from both Harvard University and Ohio University claimed to find that 62 percent of all bankruptcies in the year 2007 were caused by medical costs.[1] If accurate, this would amount to 2.4 million bankruptcies per year solely due to medical costs. Elizabeth Warren is fond of quoting the conclusions reached in this study – because she is one of the researchers involved in conducting it. Leaving the bias of Himmelstein aside, (he is the National Spokesperson for Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates a single payer system) there are multiple red flags that provide reasons to be skeptical. For instance, the study claims that 78 percent of those bankrupt from medical expenses had health insurance.[2] While the problem of the underinsured does exist, Himmelstein’s “discovery” that more insured people go bankrupt than those uninsured is questionable. Some other claims made by the Himmselstein study are that medical related bankruptcies increased 50 percent between 2001 and 2007, and that the majority of those bankrupt are middle class and well educated. Some basic problems with the study stem from its small sample size and how bankruptcy is defined for the purposes of the study. Despite attempting to get a sample size of 2,314 individuals, only 1,032 were actually interviewed for the study. Himmselstein also links all medical debt with bankruptcy. Even if an individual were to be a dollar in medical debt, and went bankrupt for any reason, he is factored into the 62 percent statistic. While Himmselstein does specify that in 92 percent of medical bankruptcies the individual has debts of over $5,000, his methodology is still sloppy. The respondents themselves may give better testimony to the causes of their bankruptcy, as only 32 percent of them attributed it to medical expenses.[3] Then we have competing studies. The most reliable study to date uses a sample size nearly 5 times that of Himmselstein?s. This study, conducted by the Department of Justice, found that 54 percent of bankruptcies involve no medical debt, and 90 percent have debt under $5,000. In addition, a study based on the Survey of Consumer Finances published by the Federal Reserve demonstrated that medical debt only rose from 5.5 percent of all debt to 5.8 percent of all debt between 2001 and 2007.[4] The study also took place during a year (2007) atypical of other years when it comes to bankruptcy procedures. As Megan McArdle of The Atlantic has documented, in 2005 a congressional bankruptcy reform bill was passed which made it more difficult to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy (where you liquidate your debts and are not required to go into a payment plan). As McArdle writes: This tightening was real, but rather exaggerated in the popular press (the overwhelming majority of people who need to file bankruptcy will have no problem qualifying for a Chapter 7).  Perhaps for that reason, even bankruptcy experts were stunned by the number of people who rushed to file before the six month grace period in the law was up.  They were also stunned by the magnitude of the decline, and how long bankruptcies took to start trending back towards previous levels.[5] There was an enormous upwards spike in the number of people filing for bankruptcy before the law went into effect. Around 12,000 people filed daily shortly before the law went into effect, but this number then fell sharply to about 1,000 daily after the law took effect. After that, daily bankruptcy filings began to steadily rise from the 1,000 of October 2005 to around 7,000 in 2010.[6] Because of this, the study measures a period where bankruptcies rose due to changes in legal code, not increasing medical expenses. A handful of other studies have contradicted the findings of Himmelstein. This includes studies by Aparna Mathur of the American Enterprise Institute, David Dranove and Michael Millsenson of Northwestern University, Scott Fay, Erik Hurst, and Michelle White from the Universitys of Florida, Chicago, and San Diego, and lastly by David Gross of Compass Lexecon and Nicolas Souleles of the University of Pennsylvania.[7] [1] Himmelstein, David U., Deborah Thorne, Elizabeth Warren, and Steffie Woolhandler. “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study.” The American Journal of Medicine, 2007. . [2] Credit to Lee Doren for pointing this out. See the video on his YouTube Channel “HowTheWorldWorks” titled “The Young Turks are Clueless, Part 5 of 4076.” Posted on November 19th 2009. [3] McArdle, Megan. “Considering Elizabeth Warren, the Scholar.” The Atlantic, 22 July 2010.  . [4] “Survey of Consumer Finances.” The Federal Reserve Board, 2007. . Note: This source was obtained through Lee Doren’s video. [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid. [7] Furchtgoth-Roth, Diana. “Testimony before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts.” Hudson Institute, 20 Oct. 2009. .

A few weeks ago, the image of Charleston shooter Dylann Roof standing in his cell with two armed guards behind him was live-streamed to the courtroom occupied by the family, which was in turn broad...

But while many suspect an ISIS link, is the attack connected to last week's AQAP threat?

The Hillary Clinton campaign forbid young supporters from talking to the press at an event last night in Iowa: 

Putting the "armed" back in Armed Forces

Clinton told stories about her life while two of her more energetic rivals fed red meat to the lions during a major Iowa Democratic Party event.

(Breitbart) ? Since President Obama commuted the life sentence of Jason Hernandez, the former inmate says he feels like he has been reborn. “I was practically a dead man walking and President Obama gave me my life back,” Hernandez said in an interview with KFOR News. “I see him like a father now. Like any son, you want ...

Exclusive — Rand Paul on Tennessee Terror: Restrict Immigration from Muslim Nations

Man wanted in Florida rally shooting (Gateway Pundit) – This week families in Virginia and Georgia were threatened by gunmen for displaying the Confederate battle flag according to police. On Monday evening a family in Chesterfield County, Virginia was on their property waving large Confederate flags as motor vehicles passed them by on the rural ...

Judge Andrew Hanen has given Jeh Johnson and the Department of Homeland Security until the end of this month to recapture all of the illegally distributed "amnesty and work authorization" permits t...

President Obama said "you’re going to hear a lot of overheated and often dishonest arguments" against the Iran deal

A prison source said Holmes has turned to Islam as a way of justifying his horrific murder spree in an Aurora, Colorado cinema last year, which left 12 people dead and 58 people wounded.

They want the case dismissed!