Ill-advised sting against doctors dropped

The Obama administration has belatedly but rightly dropped an ill-advised plan to try to convince the American people that it is doctors who are to blame for lack of access to medical care.

The administration came up with a plan to try to set up phony appointments at doctors' offices in nine states, including hundreds of offices here in Tennessee. Callers hired by the federal government were supposed to claim they were patients legitimately seeking appointments, though in fact they were not actually in need of care.

The undercover scheme was supposed to determine whether doctors were refusing to accept patients on government medical plans and opting instead for privately insured patients.

The irony is, it is already widely acknowledged by doctors and others that there is a serious shortage of medical care professionals in many areas of the United States. And ObamaCare socialized medicine is likely to make that shortage worse. The headaches associated with ObamaCare have some doctors planning to retire earlier than they otherwise would have.

ObamaCare has no real plan in place to deal either with the loss of doctors that the program may cause as physicians retire early, or with the shortage expected when millions more Americans, through ObamaCare, join the ranks of those on government health care.

Physicians are not causing the lack of access to medical care in the United States. Government interference in medicine is contributing to that shortage, however.

It is good that the Obama administration has now dropped its plan to try to pin blame for the lack of access to health care on doctors. But the administration unfortunately still does not seem willing to acknowledge that ObamaCare itself bears at least part of the blame for the growing physician shortage that will harm access to care in the coming years.