A decade ago, I publicly relinquished my membership in the American Medical Association when it came out in support of the Affordable Care Act. I felt my colleagues were blindly favoring an insurance expansion that would jeopardize quality of care and add to a physician’s growing bureaucratic burden, while not guaranteeing access to actual health care amid prohibitive deductibles and narrow care network. I was right.
Don’t get me wrong, there are many things about Obamacare that I now like, including the Medicaid expansion, the funding and expansion of federally qualified health centers in undeserved areas, and a team approach to health care delivery (Accountable Care Organizations). In fact, these parts of the law have worked out better than I anticipated.