Now that 40 million uninsured people will now have access to healthcare, where will they go to get

[Meiko]

33. You can't just dump

40 million new patients into the current health care system and not expect a problem. The politicians who wrote this legislation didn't take this into consideration, how could they? It would have taken a huge study over several months just to get a clear look at the problem. I see several doctors because I need to and not one of them has to little to do. My primary care physician is totally maxed out. If doctors begin seeing too many patients a day they make mistakes and the quality of care goes down. Some doctors may just retire rather than deal with increased costs of enlarging their staff and facility, could be thousands of them.

You also have to take into consideration the drain on support facilities. Labs, x-ray clinics and other testing facilities could easily be overrun. Instead of waiting a couple of days for a test you might find yourself waiting for several weeks.

What if the doctor just feels that he cannot ethically take on any more patients, what then? Is the government going to step in and force him? Is this the kind of health care we want. If the groups of people added to the system can't get an appointment because doctors offices are full, guess where they are going to go? how does this help anything. It just makes the current problem worse. What if the hospitals can't deal with the increased numbers and you can't get a hospital bed when you need one?

This is not going to be a seamless process. It is going to take time for the infrastructure to catch up with the patient load. Let's hope there aren't too many horror stories while this happens.