The healthcare reform bill of 2009 will provide health services to more people. Conservatives pointed out that this was a problem because the law didn’t also create more doctors to help all these new patients. They had a point:
So Page 519 of the sprawling 2010 law to overhaul the health-care system creates an influential commission to guide the country in matching the supply of health-care workers with the need. But in the eight months since its members were named, the commission has been unable to start any work.
The group cannot convene, converse or hire staff because $3 million that it needs for its initial year has been blocked by two partisan wars on Capitol Hill — strife over the federal budget and Republicans’ disdain for the health-care changes that Democrats muscled into law 14 months ago.
To translate: lack of primary care physicians is a big problem when it’s a good way of attacking Democrats, but solving the problem of primary care physicians is also a big problem — when it’s a good way of attacking Democrats, anyway. This comes via Jon Cohn, who remarks acidly, “It’s almost as if the Republicans are more interested in political symbolism than they are in making sure people can see the doctor in a timely fashion.” Almost!
