Doctor shortages and Obamacare

Will Obamacare — the Affordable Care Act — alleviate or exacerbate shortages in primary care doctors? That was the question The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine asked me to explore. I wrote this piece, Why is it so hard to find a doctor? Doctor shortages stem from multiple factors, making it a complex problem to solve. But the ACA clearly could help, especially with more doctors like Asaf Bitton.
As an aside, I find it odd that as a country we should be decrying universal health care, given that what we have in the U.S. underperforms nationalized healthcare systems elsewhere, despite spending far more. We are not getting the bang for our buck. The one exception to that truism would be catastrophic illness. The U.S. health care system is very good at keeping people alive when they by rights should be dead.