Single payer would drastically worsen physician shortages, bad pay, excessive stress and administrative burdens cause cataclysmic shortages

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package — required doctors to store patients’ medical records digitally rather than on paper. If they refused to comply, the government would cut their Medicare reimbursements.

The Affordable Care Act, passed in March of the following year, strengthened this mandate and incentivized doctors to adopt electronic health record software that makes patients’ information available to physicians across many different practices. These systems were supposed to eliminate paperwork and reduce miscommunication.

But many of the systems were so poorly designed that they created new inefficiencies and administrative hassles. According to a recent Stanford Medicine survey of primary care physicians, “62 percent of time devoted to each patient is being spent in the EHR.” Three in four primary care doctors say electronic health records have added hours to their workday. And 71% say they’re a cause of physician burnout.

By wasting doctors’ time and distracting them from their patients, the EHR mandate gave physicians a new reason to leave the profession.

If doctors think Obamacare has made their jobs harder, they’ll hate what’s in store for them under the brand of single-payer championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and now former President Barack Obama, who endorsed Medicare for All in a landmark speech on Sept. 7.

Just look at the plight of physicians in the United Kingdom’s single-payer regime, the National Health Service. The average salary for an NHS general practitioner is $117,000. In the United States, primary care physicians make nearly double that sum.

Sen. Sanders’ Medicare for All bill, S. 1804, calls for paying doctors at current Medicare reimbursement rates, which are roughly 40% lower than private insurers’ reimbursement rates. Dramatic pay cuts would no doubt be a disaster for physician retention.

Doctor Shortage: The British Lesson

Practicing medicine in the NHS, which rations care to control costs, is incredibly stressful. General practitioners are often forced to see up to 70 patients a day.

Such demanding workloads take a severe toll on physicians’ health. In a recent survey of young British doctors, eight in ten report experiencing “excessive stress” at least sometimes. Nearly a third have a mental disorder of some sort, according to a 2011 study in the British Medical Journal.

The heavy caseloads are bad for patients, too. Physicians experiencing burnout are twice as likely to make a mistake as doctors who aren’t overburdened. Incorrect prescriptions and diagnoses can easily prove fatal.

Given the low pay and crushing workloads, it’s no surprise that doctors are leaving Britain’s 70-year old single-payer system at an alarming rate. Over the last decade, the NHS has lost nearly 5,000 general practitioners. According to the chairwoman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, the country is “hemorrhaging family doctors.”

It’s not just physicians who are leaving — more than 33,000 British nurses abandon their profession every year. That’s enough to staff over 20 hospitals. Working conditions are so bad that some are leaving to work at grocery stores, which have better hours and pay.

If Democrats successfully implement an entirely government-run health system, the doctor shortage will go from severe to cataclysmic. And if trained physicians with the time and desire to see patients become even rarer commodities, rationing and long wait times will become commonplace.