Physician participation in Medicare is voluntary... nobody can FORCE a doctor to take Medicare payments. Medicare payment rates to physicians are lower than those of any private insurance company... and those rates continue to drop. So, how are doctors responding?
Apparently, Doctors in Texas are leaving Medicare in droves... in fact, it's next to impossible to find a doctor who will accept Medicare.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7009807.html
Texas doctors are opting out of Medicare at alarming rates, frustrated by reimbursement cuts they say make participation in government-funded care of seniors unaffordable.
Two years after a survey found nearly half of Texas doctors weren't taking some new Medicare patients, new data shows 100 to 200 a year are now ending all involvement with the program. Before 2007, the number of doctors opting out averaged less than a handful a year.
“This new data shows the Medicare system is beginning to implode,” said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the Texas Medical Association. “If Congress doesn't fix Medicare soon, there'll be more and more doctors dropping out and Congress' promise to provide medical care to seniors will be broken.”
To put it bluntly, doctors can't afford to keep their practice open if they accept the ultra-low rates offered by Medicare... so they respond by rejecting Medicare patients.
And this is the best that our government can do. Are we SURE we don't want to repeal ObamaCare?
A repair job? Billions are in store here. And it's a strong indicator of the competence involved in the 2,700 page effort. They really have no knowledge over how the system works now...and how we got into the current situation. So they cooked up a bold new mess, with fresh problems, and new screw-ups. We could have done the same thing with two pages of text and just taxing everyone $1300 more a year via a toilet-paper tax and a coffee tax. It would make just as much sense.
ReplyDeleteAlthough this post doesn't mention it, many other problems abound. ObamaCare wasn't kind to physician-owned hospitals... 60 of which have already been severely impacted. Hundreds of others will feel the pinch later. The result: FEWER quality hospitals instead of more.
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