Posted on 08/20/2012 4:50:47 AM PDT by NCjim
There are 600,000 physicians in America who care for the 48 million seniors on Medicare. Of the $716 billion that the Affordable Care Act cuts from the program over the next ten years, the largest chunk—$415 billion—comes from slashing Medicare’s reimbursement rates to doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes. This significant reduction in fees is driving many doctors to stop accepting new Medicare patients, making it harder for seniors to gain access to needed care. Here are a few of their stories.
Paul Wertsch is a primary physician in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1977, he and his two partners invested $500,000 of their own money and opened their own practice, the Wildwood Family Clinic, on the east side of town. Wertsch’s clinic is popular with the seniors who go there, but over time, Medicare’s fee schedule has made it harder and harder on the practice.
Wertsch billed Medicare $217 to care for a Medicare patient with a sinus infection whose appointment ran late, because the patient required more time. Medicare reimbursed the clinic for $54.38. Later in the day, a younger patient with the same sinus infection, requiring half the time, was charged the same $217. But his private insurer reimbursed the clinic for twice the amount of Medicare: $108.04.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
what about medicAID patients?
Can the government currently force doctors to accept Medicaid or Medicare patients? I know that was an issue with Hillarycare.
I predict that is the next shoe that will drop this year if the dems remain in control - forcing doctors to accept certain patients.
You bring cash to pay doctors in socialist countries. That’s how it really works. Pay the bribe.
Obama stated already single payer is the goal. First step is to collapse the existing system.
A lot more slaves on the plantation will lighten the workload for the Democrat slave owners.
“Close, but wrong. Doctors will be replaced with lower level “ Health Care Providers”, ie Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners. That’s the real plan”
I’ll add that at some point requirements will be lowered for Doctors so we can import 3rd world candidates whom would love to make $50,000 a year for a 70 hour work week.
What’s described in this article is just phase 1 (doctors refuse new patients on medicare) in the destruction of our healthcare system. Phase 2 will be the government stepping in and mandating that doctors see a certain percentage of medicare patients. Phase 3 will make it illegal to refuse care to any Obamacare insured patient, and doctors will leave practice all together and people that would have become doctors will seek careers somewhere else thus causing a crisis in access to healthcare. Everyone will be insured and there will be no doctors to see them.
Doctors become involuntary workers for the “state”.
“doctors will seek careers somewhere else”
Yep, they will become Lawyers suing whats left of the Doctors
The easiest thing is to make state license dependent on accepting the “ correct” forms of insurance. No license, no practice.
Yup. To make up the difference we will be forced to import doctors and nurses, with sub par qualifications, who can barely speak or understand or read English.
In other words we will be flooded with quacks.
NOTE TO THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGN:
One might ask: If cutting that $700 Billion in payments doesn't result in a reduction of care, then why were we spending that $700 Billion before?
And then ask, how much more can we cut before a reduction in care is noticed? Why weren't these massive cuts done before now, with all of our economic and budget troubles?
It happened in Great Briton!
Lot of doctors are not taking new Medicare patients...reimbursement sucks. And if you are retired Military over 65 you are on Tricare for Life, which sucks just as bad and is tied to Medicare and admined out of the same agency.
If you are a senior woman looking for a new GYN, you are going to have a lot of phone calls to find one who will take you, even in a large city full of them.
Team Obama’s fools who have never run a business seem to think there’s a lot of money on the table eaily recouped by reducing fraud and waste. That, they believe, is what will make up the difference. They think they know how to run your shop better than you do, remember. They are like actors, walking around in lab coats with clipboards ...
ping for later reading...
We are seeing more pop up clinics at drug stores to treat high BP or diabetes and minor stuff like school physicals. Also lots of Minor Meds. I see problems with this as they are using your SS# as ID, and there becomes an issue of possible ID theft.
Our doctor shoves us off on his PA more often than he sees us. I don’t mind the PA as long as all you need are refills of meds that are good for only 6 months. And it always involves blood work ups.
Why aren’t folks drilling into the 2700 pages of Obamacare that passed and expose what we will get if Zero gets reelected? All I have heard are nit pickings of VP contender Ryan’s budget which are still a plan, not a law like Obamacare which will become a reality. It seems like everyone is ignoring this new law and carrying on like status quo for the future of healthcare. There’s a lot here people that we should be more concerned about than anything Ryan has.A prominent hospital that I visited told me they were setting up the new computer system to get ready for the new law but they really didn’t understand or fully comprehend what they new law was going to mean for them or their future.
I'm by no means a doctor, but I do work in a healthcare-related industry. Medicine, and medical research, is very much based on continuing practice, research, development, and publication of findings. Like many sciences, it is an iterative model.
It works the best, here in the United States, because we have an economy that loosely encourages this by means of a profit motive. (I say loosely because today's model is hampered by significant regulations and taxes.) That is, new medical procedures, devices, and drugs are funded, created and developed, because companies and investors see the prospect of reward down the road.
What happens when the iterative model breaks? What happens when a generation of would-be doctors chooses not to go into medical research, because their skills are needed in general practice? What happens when biotech companies choose not to start-up because medical reaearch doesn't support their efforts? What happens when--instead of novel new medicines that treat Alzheimer's, cancer, and cardiovascular disease--big pharma companies create "me-too" medicines because they're better understood and less risky to develop?
Obamacare has the possibility of destroying healthcare as we know it, setting back the industry for years, possibly decades. If the United States doesn't lead and develop new medical treatments and medicines, it's very likely to believe that NO ONE will.
Team Obama’s fools who have never run a business seem to think there’s a lot of money on the table eaily recouped by reducing fraud and waste. That, they believe, is what will make up the difference. They think they know how to run your shop better than you do, remember. They are like actors, walking around in lab coats with clipboards ...
Along those lines:
Wal-Mart vs. The Morons
1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day.
2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!
3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.
4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.
5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world’s largest private employer, and most speak English.
6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.
7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only fifteen years.
8. During this same period, 31 big supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.
9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.
10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of whic h 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.
11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart stores. (Earth’s population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)
12. 90% of all Americans live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart.
You may think that I am complaining, but I am really laying the ground work for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to fix the economy.
This should be read and understood by all Americans… Democrats, Republicans, EVERYONE!!
To President Obama and all 535 voting members of the Legislature
It is now official that the majority of you are corrupt morons:
a.. The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years
to get it right and it is broke.
b.. Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it
right and it is broke.
c.. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right
and it is broke.
d.. War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right;
$1 trillion of our money is con fiscated each year and transferred to “the
poor” and they only want more.
e.. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years
to get it right and they are broke.
f.. Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right
and it is broke.
g.. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence
on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion
a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right
and it is an abysmal failure.
You have FAILED in every “government service” you have shoved down our
throats while overspending our tax dollars.
AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED
WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM??
I have a feeling that Government will conspire with Malpractice isurance suppliers to make the Concierge Doctors rates so high they will be forcd out of Business.
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