Not yet. Providers can still close their practices to new patients based on their insurance. Providers can legally opt out of Medicare or Medicaid w/o penalty. Providers can also simply not sign up for these programs.
But, in the future, the government may attempt to ‘force’ providers to accept all insurance as a condition of liscensure. I suppose, they could also ‘force’ providers to see a certain number or percentage of government patients. The problem is that with all coercive government programs, things will not work out as the public hopes. Physicians can see patients, but that doesn’t mean thay will do anything for them. Look at all the government rules and regulations physicians will have to overcome for patients to get any services. And if you have an unmotivated physician, there probably won’t be any sense of urgency in elective situations. Some doctors will adopt a union mentality (and we could see doctors unions) and do the minimum amount of work required. Now some doctors may ‘out-perform’ their peers by going the extra mile for the patient. But, sooner or later, other collegues will convince the high performers to ‘regress to the mean’.
The bottom line is that healthcare is cheaper for the payer (government) if little gets done. So the government probably won’t care much if service is slow and mediocre. As long as the critical incidents are kept to a minumum (that is out of the news), patients will have little recouse. Just shut-up and wait for your government cheese.
Thanks for the explanation!