Trump's claim of fleeing doctors rings false

[HAB911]

Making the case for a Republican repeal and replacement of his predecessor's health care law, President Donald Trump reached for a dire-sounding argument that's unsupported by the data.

"Many of our best and brightest are leaving the medical profession entirely because of Obamacare," Trump told his audience at a Monday night rally in Louisville, Kentucky.

In fact, the number of doctors in the U.S. actively caring for patients grew from 799,501 in 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, to 860,939 in 2015, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The American College of Physicians, which represents internists, the largest specialty, says its enrollment of new doctors has increased every year since 2012. The American Academy of Family Physicians has seen its membership grow from 94,620 to 124,900 since 2008.

While there are anecdotes about doctors dropping out, "we see no significant number exiting related to the Affordable Care Act," said Dr. Atul Grover, executive vice president of the medical colleges association. "There is also no evidence of a declining interest in medicine since the ACA took effect."

http://linkis.com/abcnews.go.com/Polit/5aIND

[Wounded Bear]

1. All of Trump's claims ring false...

[unblock]

2. they're not fleeing, they being denied re-entry by your border patrol goons!

[world wide wally]

3. Yep, they're all quitting doctoring and going to drive Ubers

[HopeAgain]

4. Been involved in Healthcare for the past 30 years...

I can think of maybe five or six doctors who voluntarily left healthcare for something else (at least four of them went into law), and none in recent years.

Many specialists are still making an obscene amount of money.

[HoneyBadger]

5. My sense it that more people are choosing nursing than they did in the past

[randome]

6. Doctors are fleeing because of the enormous crime rates caused by millions of immigrant terrorists.

There, I tied it all together for them.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[taught_me_patience]

7. If doctors are dropping out

Blame shitty reimbursement by Medicare for primary care.

[Tanuki]

8. I work in health care and I am calling b.s. on this. You will see an occasional anonymous gripe

on a forum where someone says he/she is going to retire instead of bringing their solo practice into the world of electronic medical records, but I do not know of a single instance of someone "leaving the medical profession because of Obamacare," nor have I seen anything to support that it is a trend or a problem in any publication I read. I am sure Trump could scrape up some right wing doctor who considers this a good time to retire and blames Obamacare to "prove" his case, even though it is largely untrue, just like he exploits the unfortunate victims of crimes by immigrants to insinuate that they are generally dangerous. Like everything else this pathological liar says, it either came out of the voices in his head, a facts-free Fox editorial, something his staff ripped from Breitbart and put on his "stack" of bite-size alternate factoids, or something one of his Mar-a-Lago bros told him "on good authority." He needs to put up or shut up on this, but he will no more admit he is lying or merely wrong about this than he will apologize for his slander of Obama (and Hillary, for that matter).

[underpants]

9. This was a sure fire talking point against Obamacare in 2009

Last edited Wed Mar 22, 2017, 04:44 PM - Edit history (1)

The Repubs were just SURE Doctors would give up in droves.

Related - Trumps travel ban is seen as having a big effect on the number of Doctors specifically in rural areas.

[Hortensis]

10. That's a standard-arsenal claim for the right,

used for decades any time the left wants to improve healthcare. It's never honest as used.

Some older physicians did actually decide to move up retirement when the ACA required them to computerize and create electronic medical records for all their patients--and gave patients the right to see and annotate almost all parts of their clinical record. You know, so, among other things, when you were writhing in the ER in the small hours the staff could access it.

Although, it's quite common for patients to be shocked and angry at the frequently incomplete and inaccurate mess their records often turn out to be. A future reality that probably helped more than a few sloppy record-keepers decide to just walk away.