MA passes universal health coverage law. One problem: no doctors

The Wall Street Journal has an eye-opening article today about the shortage of primary-care doctors in the country and how it will essentially derail the Bay State's initiative for universal coverage. From "Doctor shortage hurts a cover-for-all plan":

On the day Ms. Lewis signed up [for health insurance], she said she called more than two dozen primary-care doctors approved by her insurer looking for a checkup. All of them turned her away.

Her experience stands to be common among the 550,000 people whom Massachusetts hopes to rescue from the ranks of the uninsured. They will be seeking care in a state with a "critical shortage" of primary-care physicians, according to a study by the Massachusetts Medical Society released yesterday, which found that 49% of internists aren't accepting new patients. Boston's top three teaching hospitals say that 95% of their 270 doctors in general practice have halted enrollment.

For those residents who can get an appointment with their primary-care doctor, the average wait is more than seven weeks, according to the medical society, a 57% leap from last year's survey.

McQ on Q&O beat me to the story and adds that new doctors don't want to deal with the headaches of a primary-care physician:

So because primary care doctors are overworked (they are seeing many more patients now than in the past) and underpaid (median income for primary-care doctors was $162,000 in 2004, the lowest of any physician type) they're just not going into that area of medicine in sufficient numbers.

Thank you, socialist busy-bodies and your unintended consequences. Soon we'll be a nation of emergency rooms and urologists.