Obamacare a 'war against doctors,' warns desperate U.S. physician

Friday, March 28, 2014 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
Tags: Obamacare, patient care, U.S. physicians

(NaturalNews) A physician from Decatur, Alabama, is frustrated with new Affordable Care Act provisions that have added multiple thousands of new medical codes that are flat out wasting his time. He's watched angered colleagues go into early retirement because of the confusion. He's now unable to see new patients due to all the unnecessary administrative work that is destroying doctor-to-patient relationships.

In a letter written to US Representative Mo Brooks, Dr. Marlin Gill wrote firmly that the new Affordable Care Act has resulted in a "war against doctors." In the letter, which was presented before the speaker of the house, Dr. Marlin Gill calls for the repeal of the national healthcare law.

Obamacare forces doctors to focus more on administrative tasks and less on patient care

The letter opens, stating, "As a practicing family physician, I plead for help against what I can best characterize as Washington's war against doctors."

Dr. Gill wrote that his profession is now focusing less on patient care than ever before, as his practice takes on new mandated procedures that decrease efficiency while adding stress and longer work hours that have nothing to do with taking care of patients.

Good doctors leaving patient care positions

Dr. Gill wrote about six doctors he knew who either left patient care for administrative positions or fled into outright retirement.

This adds to numerous grassroots reports showing a growing number of doctors who would rather leave their lifelong work behind than stick around and deal with the monstrous new procedures.

The system is bursting at the seams with unnecessary procedures, regulations, codes and paperwork.

He wrote, "Doctors are smothered by destructive regulations that add costs, raise our overhead and 'gum up the works,' making patient treatment slower and less efficient, thus forcing doctors to focus on things other than patient care and reduce the number of patients we can help each day."

Administrative tasks are now preoccupying doctors' time, forcing them to enter more data into the computer, leaving sick patients waiting, with less one-on-one quality care. This in turn has a trickle-down effect, leaving patients in the dark, shuffled around in a maze of unnecessary tests and ill advice.

Obamacare's new electronic medical record requirements make care less efficient

Dr. Gill criticized the law's implementation of new electronic medical record requirements. His practice, which employs four doctors, will now have to pay $100,000 or more each year just to operate and maintain the new EMR databases. This system alone balloons healthcare prices, making the cost of services dependent on increasing health insurance costs, which are also passed down as higher taxes now thanks to the law.

"Washington's electronic medical records requirement makes our medical practice much slower and less efficient, forcing our doctors to treat fewer patients per day than we did before the EMR mandate," he wrote.

Highlighting the law's coercion, he wrote how the government now forces doctors like him to "demonstrate 'meaningful use' of EMR" or risk having compensation for helping patients withheld if full evidence is not provided.

New medical coding system expands from 13,000 codes to 70,000 codes

"In addition to the electronic medical records burden, we face a mandate to use the ICD-10 coding system, a new set of reimbursement diagnosis codes," the letter read.

The ICD-10 coding system mandated under the Affordable Care Act replaces the old system of 13,000 medical codes, creating an additional 57,000 codes. This slows down doctors who must now learn and implement a complex and erroneous set of new codes.

"The cost of this new ICD-10 coding system for our small practice is roughly $80,000, again driving up health care costs without one iota of improvement in health care quality," Dr. Gill said.

Non-payments robbing his practice

His final concern was about new Obamacare recipients who choose not to pay their premiums. "[W]e have no way of verifying this," he said. "No business can operate with that much uncertainty."

The full video of Dr. Gill's letter being read before the speaker of the house can be seen here.

Sources for this article include:

http://blog.al.com

http://www.youtube.com

http://gillfamilymedicine.org