Posted on 12/12/2013 2:57:58 AM PST by Olog-hai
A small but growing number of physicians are not accepting government insurance, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and are even refusing to accept patients’ private insurance, according to Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).
Orient says the transition to a business model in which patients agree to pay doctors directly for the health care services they provide started before Obamacare was passed, but that the new law has accelerated the trend, especially among AAPS’ 4,000 or so members.
AAPS is the conservative alternative to the much larger American Medical Association (AMA), which endorsed Obamacare while AAPS opposed it. …
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Met with two of my doctors this past week. One works for the federal gubmint and the other a major health care hospital/clinic. Both advised the same thing. No new patients with Medicare insurance.
Watch and see while MDs take their practices to off-shore Carribean islands for routine and elective procedures. Patients who have saved their money will be able to enjoy a nice vacation while receiving medical care. Believe me when I say that people will not put up with this sh*t. The health care in the USA will be reduced to the lowest common denominator offered by the worst doctors to the bottom feeders of this country - the Obama voters.
Medical school. “Oh, boy, this is gonna be great!”
So much for future affluence.
So much for future affluence.
I like to tell the story of my grand nephew, who years ago saw this coming (he really is that prescient) and dropped plans to be a doctor. Next spring he receives his PhD. in engineering from a major university. Good move.
We have a chiropractor here in Pittsburgh who is on the radio approximately 147 hours per week.
He spent all of 2012 shilling for Obama, glowing about Obamacare, and claiming that all of the reports of a train wreck were just “Right-wing Propaganda.”
He has however, stopped accepting third-party insurance in his own office.
Mexico is closer, and some physicians are already setting up surgical practices there. Both their patients and the surgeon normally live in the US, but both travel to Mexico for the surgery.
Mexico has a large number of competent, English speaking medical support people, again vetted by the American surgeon. Added up, a major surgery for cash costs as little as 1/4th the price of getting it in the US. There is the added advantage that the surgery will not be in the patient’s HIPAA medical file, so cannot be accessed by government agencies.
The doctor does not have to pay egregious malpractice insurance prices, nor worry about litigation. It is all very cheap, cheerful, and capitalist.
I turn 65 nest year and fully expect it to be nearly impossible to find a physician or clinic accepting new Medicare patients. I will probably have to either go to a hospital emergency room or stand in line at some public health clinic in a seedy part of town to find my medical care. A Medicare card will be not worth a discounted cup of coffee at the local Denny’s and to think the the Democrats have for years been accusing Republicans of doing this to the nation’s seniors.
Opinion
Scott Gottlieb: This ‘Doc Fix’ Would Be Bad for Your Health
An attempt to alter Medicare may let Washington dictate how doctors treat patients.
By
Scott Gottlieb
Dec. 11, 2013 7:08 p.m. ET
Imagine if a provision in ObamaCare allowed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to dictate directly to doctors which services they could and could not provide their patients—what individual tests they could conduct, which treatments they could offer, and medicines they could prescribe.
Americans would be outraged.
Yet some Republicans on Capitol Hill are about to help Democrats pass such a provision for Medicare patients. The Senate Finance Committee is set to vote on permanent “doc-fix” legislation Thursday that grants the federal government broad new authority to determine “applicable appropriate use criteria” for the full range of outpatient medical services delivered to seniors. Similar legislative language is included in bipartisan draft legislation that is being marked up Thursday in the HouseWays and Means Committee.
The bill is part of a larger effort to change the way Medicare pays doctors. Each year since 2002, Congress has passed temporary “doc-fix” legislation to cover billions of dollars of shortfalls in Medicare payments. The provisions in the bill apply to advanced radiology imaging tools like CT scans and MRIs. But language tucked into the legislation enables “the Secretary” of HHS to exert the same controls over the vast array of outpatient medical care for seniors.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303293604579251951156481492
The wife of a good friend of mine traveled to Mexico for surgery. Her trip was uneventful enough until she died.
Did you mean to say it that way ? That sounds kinda like "Other than that, Mrs. Kennedy, how was Dallas ?"
She died on the operating table.
Was at a conference at Mass/Gen Harvard. Doc on my left was singing the praises of Hussein, while admitting that she was going into a concignore practice because she just couldn’t manage the billing the way the government required.
The Doc to the right of me was soooooo angry, he was a surgeon and they rarely can be up front payment sorts of guys. I thought we were going to need a cardio guy for him at one point.
Point. Leftists like to make messes but not live in them.
Lots of people die on the operating table. Unless you flesh it out, it’s hard to make assumptions.
Did she know her doctor? Her anesthesiologist? What was her condition? Major, minor, or cosmetic surgery?
If you can just fill in these four things, the proximate cause of her demise will be a lot easier to determine.
The surgery was minor and cosmetic. She was cremated without the concurrence of her husband.
So I would assume she went down there looking for a Mexican doctor, maybe found a legitimate one, or not, and he botched the procedure, or she had an unexpected, severe reaction to the anesthetic. And he was not equipped to handle a cardiopulmonary emergency.
You don’t have to go to Mexico for that to happen to you. It happens in both Texas and Florida at intervals.
You know... this could be a very positive outcome to this fiasco.
People will have no option but to actually pay for the services they receive. And market forces will once again provide the best service for the best price.
The difference, of course, is that had she died at the hands of a US physician her family would have had recourse and, in substantial part because US medical institutions are aware of the financial consequences of that recourse, they try really hard not to screw up.
Not really a fair comparison. Getting surgery in a quality US hospital, by a quality US surgeon is comparable to getting surgery by a quality US surgeon in a quality Mexican surgical facility.
It is not comparable with just hunting up someone who will do the surgery, wherever. The operable missing word is quality.
People can and do find unqualified or poor quality surgeons in the US as well, if their sole consideration is cost. Some are acting illegally, some not. Some who are qualified act without malpractice insurance and have no substantial assets to seize.
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