FORT WAYNE The short-term prognosis for health care providers is gloom and doom.

Costs are high and rising. Incomes are falling. Fewer students can afford medical school or want to become primary-care physicians. The federal government is botching its oversight of private health insurance and reducing its reimbursements to doctors.

Those were among views expressed Wednesday during a group discussion led by two lawmakers who are also physicians.

Unless medical providers become more engaged in the politics of health care, were going to get run over by a truck by Washington, D.C., by CMS and by the rest of the government, Rep. Larry Bucshon, R-8th, warned at the gathering at Lutheran Hospital. CMS is the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Bucshon, who represents southwest Indiana, and state Rep. Tim Brown, R-Crawfordsville, visited Lutheran Hospital as part of their two-week Hoosier Healthcare Tour.

Brown, chairman of the Indiana House Ways and Means Committee, is an emergency physician. Bucshon is a cardiothoracic surgeon from Evansville.

The dozen people taking part in the Fort Wayne session included local doctors, health administrators, an insurer and Allen County Commissioner Nelson Peters. Some spent much of the 90-minute meeting lamenting requirements and costs of the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which stipulates that people must obtain health insurance or pay penalties.

Bucshon has voted many times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But he said he does not want to return to letting insurers deny coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

The good parts of the law that are there, and there are some, OK, are going to sustain in the long term. And the parts of the law that are clearly not working will be repealed and replaced with something different, Bucshon predicted.

For one thing, care providers should offer more pricing information to consumers, the second-term congressman said.

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Health care's ills worry leaders