On the recordJuly 25, 2011
I thank you for yielding just a moment to me because I want to add to that statistic; 15 percent of hospitals, nursing homes, and home health care will close because Medicare pays less under ObamaCare. That's absolutely true. A lot of those hospitals are going to be in rural communities because rural communities are going to be hit the hardest. Right now I'm a primary care doctor. As the gentleman knows, I'm a family doctor. I've done general medicine for almost 40 years now. The American Academy of Family Physicians said right now, today, one in eight family docs will not accept Medicare at all. Only one in three doctors, according to the American Medical Association limits how many Medicare patients that they take. {time} 2100 That is a marked rise. Back in 2004, only 6 percent of all doctors limited their Medicare patients. In 2008, it went up to 8 percent. Now it's almost one-third limit the amount of Medicare patients that they see. And one in eight family docs don't take Medicare at all; they can't afford to because of the low reimbursement rates. And IPAB is going to hit those folks that much harder. During our Special Order when we were discussing ObamaCare I made a comment that somebody may have a free health care card in their pocket, but it's going to be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the War Between the States because nobody will take it, and that's exactly where we are headed. So I just wanted to add that.
