Obamacare's affect on medical offices

[Enrique Lee]

Hi. I've been thinking about investing in medical office for a while, but I'm rather confused by obamacare's potential impact on medical offices. On one hand I do know there'd be more people covered with health insurance (a good thing), but on the other hand I know individual practices will be penalized under obamacare therefore more likely to join a hospital. So will the medical office market, especially small ones, take a hit from the affordable care act? 

Also I've been researching about investing in DFW area, are there things I should know about the market? 

[Linda Weygant]

Not sure I follow your logic.  How do you come to the belief that individual practices are penalized thus motivating doctors to "join a hospital"

Doctors don't "join a hospital".  Except for the emergency room staff, who may or may not be hospital staff (they may rotate into the ER from their private practice), doctors are generally in private practice or belong to a larger office of physicians with admitting privileges at a hospital so they can use the facilities to perform operations.

Also, you speak about the Affordable Care Act in the future tense.  ACA is currently our system and we are working under the system now.  There is one additional tax to be levied against high cost health plans in 2018, but other than that, what you see now is what you get.

I am unaware of any aspect of the ACA that penalizes individual practices in any manner, so would be very interested to understand how you arrived at this conclusion.

That said, as segments of the American population continues to age, medical offices are very likely to be a decent investment providing there is not already oversaturation of the local market.