Many doctors are refusing Medicare patients because of the horrible regulatory tangle in the program and the slow payments from the government. If enough doctors refuse Medicare patients, the problem will fix itself. Many of our elderly will have to find something else to do with their time than drive to the doctor three times a week to get new prescriptions so they can frolic again as the TV ads promise they will.
Yeah....why don’t we just let all our parents and grandparents die. You slap our elderly in the face by that remark as though they are using our system of trying to take care of them. As in any business, doctors know that eventually it will all catch up and their payments will be coming in on a regular basis. Unless of course the doctor has questionable practices.
My mother-in-law visits the doctor about every other week. She demands all manner of diagnostic procedures, pain meds that she is sorely addicted to, and various imaginery complaints that often prove unfounded. She has been taken by ambulance in the middle of the night 3 times in the last year just to get pain medication — this occurred when she ran out of her morphine derivative. She says it is all free and it costs here little of nothing. This attitude and abuse of the system is busting the budget and I suspect it occurs nationwide. She is also on 7 or 8 other drugs and thinks there is a pill for every ailment.
My doctor recently put up a new sign that says “We no longer accept Medicare. Please pay in full for all services rendered and Medicare will reimbuse you.”
other ways....STOP the mandatory 3 night stay for people that need to go to a nursing home.....
stop keeping people artificially alive when they reach 85..no tube feedings...( when they are in a chronic debilitated state with no chance of recovery.)...
require every Medicare patient to pay SOMETHING meaningful towards all their doctor visits and their meds, etc....
stop paying for scooters ...