The bogus "I won't get to choose my doctor" argument against healthcare reform

One of the frustrating things about the healthcare debate is the idea going around that, under "Obamacare," people won't be able to go to the doctor they want to see.

To begin with, this is a huge problem under the existing setup. People without health insurance, of course, can't afford to see any doctor- they're stuck with whoever's in the ER or free clinic. Even many people with insurance can't get the doctor they want. When i was a teacher in LA, I had my pick of doctors so long as they worked at they Kaiser Permanente medical center. Even after the doctors there lost the pathology report on a surgery I had, and one of them nearly killed me because he didn't read my chart properly, I was stuck with them because it was my insurance didn't cover anywhere else. While in Law School, I was using the Beech Street, and I couldn't see a Crohn's specialist because Beech Street wasnt accepted by any doctors in NYC who specialized in that disorder.

The argument against reform is that having a public option will force all the private insurers out of business, so everyone will be stuck with something like Medicare- and I keep hearing from people something along the lines of "everyone knows that most doctors won't even accept medicare, so you'll be stuck with the lousy doctors who accept it." This sounds like a big problem with the public option, until you read something like this from a 2007 study by the Department fo Health and Human Services:

More than two thirds (70 percent) of traditional Medicare enrollees say they “always” get access to needed care (appointments with specialists or other necessary tests and treatment), compared with 63 percent in Medicare managed care plans and only 51 percent of those with private insurance.

The same study showed higher rates of customer satisfaction from Medicare (and even Medicaid!) enrollees than from private insurance customers. This seems to indicate that, even if you accept the premise (which I don't) that the "public option" in Obamacare will force everybody into a Medicare-like plan, that that plan will be worse than what most people already have.