Former Florida State Rep. Paige Kreegel, a medical doctor, says he is seeing the negative impact of Obamacare first-hand in his practice.
"It's been significant, big cuts this year, and already they have contracted the panels of physicians available," Kreegel, a Republican who served in the Florida House from 2005 to 2012 and is currently running for a U.S. House seat, told Newsmax TV's John Bachman on "America's Forum" on Monday.
Many insurance plans offered on the Obamacare exchanges limit the number of doctors and hospitals that are available in order to keep costs down, meaning many patients have to find new healthcare providers.
"So, seniors who see me, for example, and need to find a new heart doctor, or scrambling to find a new kidney doctor for their dialysis, or, God forbid, if they have a cancer doctor they have to see and they find out that the doctor they've been going to for a long time is no longer on the panel because of the severe cutbacks," Kreegel said.
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Kreegel also expects to see additional harmful effects of the healthcare law in the near term, pointing to the recent Congressional Budget Office report showing that Obamacare could cost the economy more than 2 million workers.
"What they're telling us is that the next year and a half, two and a half million full-time jobs will evaporate. Now, that is just unconscionable, and along with those jobs goes, of course, their health insurance.
"By the way, not only health insurance, but their paid vacation, their sick leave, and any kind of retirement program for them. It's probably the worst economic disaster we could imagine, and it's all coming about, according to the CBO, because of Obamacare," Kreegel said.
Currently a candidate for Congress in Florida’s 19th District, Kreegel vowed to focus on challenging Obamacare if elected.
"The biggest thing we're looking at, the biggest encumbrance to any kind of recovery from this recession, is Obamacare. It's almost designed to kill the economy. Whatever we need to do, whatever we can do to slow it down, to knock it back, and, hopefully, if we can get 51 votes in the Senate, to repeal it or at least defund it, that's really what we need to do in this country, and that's what we need to do in the next Congress," he said.
"And what do I bring to that? I bring 30 years of medical experience. I spent an entire career in medical care, medical administration. I've been an ER doctor. I've been in private practice. I've taught medicine at the University of South Florida. I've been a medical missionary to Third World countries and I've been on the boards of three hospitals."
Asked why he thinks there is such an influx of physicians into Congress these days, Kreegel responded, "Well, you have to remember, we're in the front line. We see patients every day and we see what they're going through with their medical care. And things have gotten bad and then they've gone to worse, and it looks like we're only going to get worse yet."
"People have to do something about it. Those of us in the medical profession, we know the most about what's going on. We need to be the ones to spread the word and, hopefully, to get in there and stop this from happening," he said.
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