links for 2010-07-16

California's supply of physicians has been growing faster than its population in recent years and now matches the national ratio. While specialists abound, however, primary care physicians are in relatively short supply and the squeeze could increase as older doctors retire and demand for care increases under the new federal health plan.

So concludes a statistical report by the California Healthcare Foundation. "With large numbers of physicians nearing retirement," the foundation says, "and not all doctors taking patients with private or public insurance, those seeking care, especially in some regions, could have difficulty finding a provider."

Nearly 30 percent of California's physicians are 60 years or older, a higher percentage than any other state, the study found, and the state is increasingly dependent on foreign-trained physicians.
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When ObamaCare goes into effect, many MD's will simply retire.

President Barack Obama acknowledges that the fall elections could amount to a referendum on his stewardship of the nation's affairs.

Obama tells NBC in an interview that "nobody in the White House is satisfied" with continuing high unemployment.

But he also says the midterm congressional elections could come down to "a choice between the policies that got us into this mess and my policies that got us out of this mess."

The president said in the interview he believes voters "are going to say the policies that got us into this mess, we can't go back to." He also said Washington "has spent an inordinate amount of time on politics — who's up and who's down — and not enough on what we're doing for the American people."
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Note how the President failed to mention about his perceived recovery or the future

Our monthly look at who GOP voters prefer as their 2012 nominee finds that Sarah Palin is the most popular potential Republican hopeful with the base…but that she finishes just fourth when it comes to who they want as their nominee. For the first time Newt Gingrich is the leader in this poll with 23%, followed by Mike Huckabee at 21%, Mitt Romney at 19%, Palin at 17%, and Ron Paul at 7%.
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If Sarah Palin decides not to run it will be a Gingrich vs. Romney shoot out.

In possibly the first inter-staff dust-up of the 2012 presidential race, an aide of Sarah Palin is hitting back at Mitt Romney’s camp for saying the former Alaska governor is “not a serious human being.”

A “Romney intimate” was quoted by "Time" magazine’s Mark Halperin in a Thursday column as saying that Palin could not withstand the rigors of a presidential campaign.

“If she’s standing up there in a debate and the answers are more than 15 seconds long, she’s in trouble,” the Romney intimate said.

An additional Romney adviser was quoted as saying the former Massachusetts governor’s team is not intimidated by a possible Palin run. “She’s not a serious human being,” the adviser said.
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Sarah Palin will decimate Romney in Iowa and South Carolina and Mitt knows it.