Photo by Kim McManusIt sure is difficult to give good information about the new health care law when the critics keep fighting the war. Such was the case this morning when I appeared on a panel sponsored by the Charleston Regional Business Journal.
One of the other three panelists was the CEO of a large primary care physician group. Armed with his talking points from the now-over Congressional battle, the gentleman kept listing all the reasons to be afraid of the new law including the bogus charge that the law requires 17,000 new IRS agents to be hired to enforce the individual mandate.
His opening salvo was that the Charleston community had plenty of primary health care available through free clinics and faith based organizations to take care of the uninsured. So the new law is trying to fix something that wasn’t broken.
Knapp fired back, criticizing what he called discrimination against the working poor. He said he would encourage everyone to use free or church-based clinics for medical care if they are real alternatives to the care available to people with insurance. “Is that the real medical home you want?” Knapp said.
My primary health care friend did say that his group would be expanding into more rural areas and locate in strip shopping malls to serve the increased demand from having more people with Medicaid or private insurance. The new locations, he said, would help solve the transportation problem some people have in getting to a doctor.
After the panel ended I congratulated the gentleman for his expansion plans and told him that his idea was exactly what needs to be done. I went away wondering why he was so adamantly opposed to a new law that obviously was going to increase demand for his services and thus his bottom line.