Obamacare and its included hundreds of billions of cuts in Medicare hasn’t even passed yet, and the short shrifting of doctors fees in Medicare is already driving them away from treating seniors. From the story:
Medicare has become a scary word to the doctors at the largest private group practice in Kansas City, Mo. It’s so scary that most physicians at Kansas City Internal Medicine, with 65% of its nearly 70,000 active patients age 65 or older, have stopped accepting walk-in Medicare enrollees, said Dr. David Wilt, an internist at the group. Wilt and his colleagues say they are shunning the area’s growing senior population because they believe Medicare doesn’t reimburse physicians enough to cover the cost of care. “And if Medicare further cuts its reimbursement rates, then we’ll be functioning at a loss,” said Wilt.
Is this an anomaly?Medicare bureaucrats tell us not to worry:
The federal government’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it is aware of anecdotal reports of doctors not taking Medicare beneficiaries. However, the agency maintains that its own data, and other industry reports, show only a small percentage of beneficiaries unable to get physician access. CMS said 96.5% of all practicing physicians, nearly 600,000 doctors, currently participate in Medicare. “Geographically, the level within every state is less than 5% of Medicare beneficiaries who have difficulties accessing a doctor,” said Renee Mentnech, director of CMS’ Research and Evaluation Group.
That may be so, but the cuts are just beginning to bite:
Federal law requires that Medicare physicians’ payment rates be adjusted annually based on a sustainable-growth rate that’s tied to the health of the economy. Physicians face a rate cut every year, although Congress has at the last minute blocked those cuts from happening in seven of the last 8 years. Dr. Keith Jantz, an internist at Kansas City Internal Medicine, fears that if the 21% cut goes through next year, “physicians around the country would stop seeing any Medicare patients. It’s happening in places like Las Vegas and in Anchorage, Alaska, and this could be a harbinger of what’s to come unless Medicare maintains decent [payment] rates,” Jantz said.
Exactly. Pass Obamacare and we will see more flesh taken out of physicans’, hospitals’, and other providers’ financial hides as Obamacare pushers try to make the books balance by cutting hundreds of billions from Medicare. And if they get the public option, these cuts will eventually continue across the board–especially once private insurance is driven into the ditch. That will mean fewer doctors, less quality care, and eventually limited access.
You want to look at the future under Obamacare? It is alreadybeginning to manifest.
October 27th, 2009 | 9:03 pm
The CMS comment about participation is misleading: the fact that a doctor is a “participating physician” in Medicare does not necessarily mean they are willing to see Medicare patients. In fact, in an almost Orwellian twist, if a doctor drops his participation in Medicare, he/she is automatically re-enrolled after two years, unless one continues to renew one’s non-participation. Like the Hotel California, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave…
The future of Medicare is the present of Medicaid: in Washington state, well over 50% of physicians no longer see Medicaid patients due to abysmal reimbursement rates, (Medicaid pays only about 50-60% of the actual costs of seeing a patient), long waits to receive payment, and huge bureaucratic burdens placed on providers. In my previous group practice — one of the few in our area still accepting Medicaid — many patients traveled 2-3 hours to see us, as there was no specialist accepting Medicaid any closer to home.
Seeing patients at less than the cost of providing their care is not a sustainable business model — especially when private insurance — which effectively subsidizes the care of these patients — is squeezed out of business by the 800-pound gorilla of government.
The future of health care is indeed bleak if anything vaguely resembling Obamacare ever gets passed.
October 28th, 2009 | 10:02 am
The government will, of course, solve this by fining any physician who does not take medicare patients – that will fix those evil physicians – who cares if they are losing money.
October 28th, 2009 | 1:20 pm
Just yesterday, I was perusing medical info online at several U.S. Prostate Cancer [PC] forums for my PC [on medicare] husband. I noted an interesting exchange between a senior citizen male from England, also suffering from PC. He was asking lots of simple basic PC questions at this Prostate forum which consisted mainly if not entirely of PC members from the U.S. The very informative exchange was enlightening for the Brit who revealed he was totally in the dark regarding his cancer and follow-up therapies and how remarkable it was that men in the U.S. were so well informed on the disease. The uninformed British senior citizen pointed out an important fact: Brits are under Socialized medicine and their frustrated, overworked doctors and nurses brush aside patients’ questions seeking information. British medical personal are overworked and underpaid and quality of care is lacking. In the U.S., he said, there is superior private sector healthcare system in place which reimburses doctors and nurses sufficiently, and medical personnel are satisfied and compensated well. Private sector healthcare patients are able to pick and choose their doctors, depending upon satisfaction of treatment and follow-up, motivating superior care and therapies in the U.S.
October 28th, 2009 | 6:59 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lisa Correnti, leahcim. leahcim said: Obamacare: Medicare Cuts Driving Physicians Away » Secondhand …: Like the Hotel California, you can check out.. http://bit.ly/1VXKCJ [...]
October 30th, 2009 | 11:21 pm
Doctors and the rest of the “health care” world had a lousy attitude about the elderly before Obama got elected. Obama got elected because people were as dumb about him as they are about the elderly, and the bad attitude doctors have toward the elderly is part of society’s bad attitude toward them, people go along with and “respect” what doctors say, etc.
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