"Remedy for rural doctor shortage is in test stage" by Darryl Fears, Washington Post | August 15, 2010
ESMONT, Va. — The administration recently invested more than $1 billion from the stimulus and the health care law into the National Health Services Corps to beef up doctor recruitment....
Why would a doctor have to be recruited?
But several young doctors who were interviewed said they are struggling with whether to spend a career in rural settings. Experts said they expect retention to be a problem....
Let's meet one, shall we?
Sarah Carricaburu is a test case for the Obama administration’s goal, under the new health care law, to bring thousands of young primary care doctors to underserved areas such as this unincorporated town of 1,200 and keep them there....
She was unprepared for the daily inconveniences of rural living: well water in the clinic’s kitchen sink that smells of rotten eggs; being unable to use the iPhone’s Epocrates app, which helps doctors identify and prescribe medicine; the dial-up Internet that crawls along on a single computer shared by the clinic; the 40-minute drive to a grocery store; the lack of dating potential.
Yeah, her successful love life will make us all feel better, sigh.
The National Health Service Corps should make rural offices more friendly to technologically savvy young doctors if it want them to stay, she said.
Don't they take an oath to.... ah, never mind.
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Don't worry, Americans; if the doc don't get it done, 'bomber will:
"Some states lacking in US health law authority; Application of new rules could vary widely" by Robert Pear, New York Times | August 15, 2010
WASHINGTON — Faced with the need to review insurance rates and enforce a panoply of new rights granted to consumers, states are scrambling to make sure they have the necessary legal authority to carry out the responsibilities being placed on them by President Obama’s health care legislation.
Insurance commissioners in about half the states say they do not have clear authority to enforce consumer protection standards that take effect next month.
Federal and state officials are searching for ways to plug the gap. Otherwise, they say, the ability of consumers to secure the benefits of the new law could vary widely depending on where they live.
They took all that time to write a vague PoS law?
PFFFFT!
Meanwhile, state governments that have for years allowed insurers to set premiums virtually at will are gearing up to establish procedures to review rate increases....
States have the primary role in enforcing many of the new standards. If a state fails to enforce a standard, the federal government will step in....
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Also see: No Choice With Obamacare
Yeah, I guess lying to you is for your own good, too.
