Patients with employer-sponsored low cost premiums and high deductibles are pushing physicians into a corner, with some doctors demanding that their patients remaining deductible get paid in full before seeing them. “It used to be taboo to look like you were looking for money at a time when you were supposed to be focused on patient care,” said David Williams, president of Boston-based consulting firm Health Business Group, “It’s not taboo anymore.”

Employers are following suit as they push workers to share more financial responsibility for health care. The percentage of insured workers with a deductible of $1,000 or more for single coverage jumped to 34 percent in 2012 from 12 percent in 2007, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.

Overall, the number of people with high deductible plans rose to 15.5 million in 2013 from 1 million in 2005, according to America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s lobbying group in Washington.

“We expect the trend toward high deductibles to continue,” said Ceci Connolly, managing director of PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute in Washington. “There’s nothing in the law that curbs high deductibles and we very much expect more and more employers to move to high-deductible plans.”

Dr. Alieta Eck says people are learning that low-cost premiums have high deductibles, such as a $130 premium and a $5,000 deductible. "They are finding that they haven't had health insurance beause they couldn't afford it, and now that they are being forced to pay for it, the chances are they are never going to utilize it," she explains.

Eck says physicians who enroll (in Obamacare) "need to have their heads examined” if they do. Why?

Because a patient could pay the initial premium and be enrolled and then start seeing a doctor, not pay his second month or third month premium, and the insurance company would be under no obligation to pay that doctor,” says Eck