You can keep your doctor, but will your doctor keep you?

The Patient Protection and Affordability Act was touted as the solution to all that ails the American health care industry.

It will insure the uninsured. It will lower costs across the board. It will heal the lame, the halt and the blind. It will insure children to age 26. It will prevent insurers from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. It will cover preventative care at no extra cost.

That is if …

… if you can find a doctor.

The Physicians Foundation’s 2010 Physicians and Health Reform survey, conducted by Merritt Hawkins, asked 40,000 actively practicing physicians throughout the United States what they plan to do as a result of ObamaCare. The survey has a margin of error of less than 2 percent.

Are you  ready?

Forty percent said they may drop out of patient care in the next one to three years — by retiring, seeking a non-clinical job within healthcare, or by seeking a non-healthcare related job.

Other key findings:

— 74 percent of physicians said they would take steps to change their current practice style.

— 60 percent said health reform will compel them to close or significantly restrict their practices to certain categories of patients. Of these, 93 percent said they will drop or restrict Medicaid patients, while 87 percent said they would drop or restrict Medicare patients.

— 69 percent said they will no longer have the time or resources to see additional patients.

— 10 percent said reform will improve the quality of patient care, while 56 percent said it will diminish the quality of care.