The Impacts of "Obamacare" on the Lubbock Medical Community

"I think this decision has a huge potential for my practice in a very positive way."

Local pediatrician, Doctor Douglas Klepper said Thursday's Supreme Court ruling has the biggest impact on the youngest patient.

"Hopefully this will allow us to get better coverage and universal coverage for several children that have been denied coverage," said Dr. Klepper.

Many of those children have preexisting conditions, like chronic or congenital illnesses. And without coverage, they cannot receive the care they need.

"It's extremely frustrating because we cannot necessarily give medications these children need or get the right diagnostic tools that are needed. I recently had a family who who had no funding whatsoever, and the way I approached that child was completely different than what I would've done on a funded child. We had to delay our diagnosis and our treatment til we could actually get adequate funding for that child," said Dr. Klepper.

But Dr. Klepper said the government requiring these children to have health insurance, their quality of life will be forever changed.

"Hopefully we'll have a quicker recovery and a better lifestyle and health for children long term."

Across the board, the decision impacts health care professionals differently. UMC Spokesman Eric Finley said the ruling changes the government funding they receive when seeing uninsured patients.

"The government then reimburses us for that charge that we were to bill our patient. What this act does, it takes that money away from us, gives it to insurance companies to fund them or creates their own insurance company. The government's rational is that it will still come to you, just through an insurance provider," said Finley.

Both Finley and Dr. Klepper agree there are still concerns over this bill.

"That funding will be cut before people are insured, funding cuts are already started, so we're gonna see a reduction in funding before we actually see people with the insurance, and that's gonna be a financial strain on us," said Finley.

"Many people think that because people have better access to health care that we will have a heavier work load: we will definitely need more providers to meet these needs. But hopefully it will translate into a better quality of life and care," said Dr. Klepper.