Why America's Doctor Shortage Might Mean Trouble for Obamacare

[Shandris]

5. As I've noted on this topic before though...

...there is a hidden problem in this assumption -- the assumption is that people have the time to take off from work to take advantage of all these new trained personnel. That's one HUGE assumption when you eke by on what you make working as many hours as humanly possible; now take a day off work PLUS the co-pay and see how it looks. Furthermore, plan on doing that with some regularity for any other family members, plus so-called 'routine care' and you're going to find most poor people -- the people using the ER's in this manner -- simply can't -afford- to do that.

You can argue that in the long run they'll save money on the preventative care, and you'd be right -- but planning for the long term is -not- the reality of these folks. If it were, they wouldn't stay poor for long. This is the harsh reality that gets overlooked because, simply put, unless you've (generic 'you') been there, you don't -think- about that kind of thing.