Fact of life Drs made a killing on Medicare over the years
“An amazingly honest essay by Ms Estrich.”
Yes and no. This statement seems particularly dishonest:
“I remember the days when the health insurance industry used to advertise that Hillary Clinton would take your doctor away. She didn’t.”
Of course she didn’t, because HillaryCare went down in flames. Estrich is delusional to think that plan would have played out any differently than other versions of government run health care, be they labeled “Medicare” or “ObamaCare.” When the government gets control, declining access and quality inevitably follow.
So kudos to Ms. Estrich for recognizing what’s actually happening to our nation’s largest single-payer health plan. But shame on her for not recognizing or conceding that HillaryCare was simply single payer in sheep’s clothing.
“Her husband had turned 65 and was now eligible for Medicare. Good news...”
Wahoo! More government handouts, benefits, entitlements, and subsidies for Socialized Seasoned Citizens! Who says Socialism doesn’t work?
When I see my doctor bills and how much smaller is the payment from Medicare, I am surprised my doctor has not kicked me out.
Example: Office visit with medium length consultation is $145,
Medicare approved payment $42. That is all I am obligated to pay
if I have not met my annual Medicare deductible, which is usually true since I need very few visits to the doctor.
After meeting my deductible, the doctor still gets only $42.
I almost feel guilty walking out of her office.
Irony of ironies, Obama may go down in history as the US president who *ended* socialized medicine.
First of all, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare are not mathematically sustainable. But this didn’t prevent the socialists from finally forcing socialized medicine down our throats. However, to do so, they had to kill Medicare. Well, they have done that as well. Medicare is withering on the vine.
They wanted to force Medicare patients into Obamacare. But there is a serious window in the timetable when they will have neither Medicare nor Obamacare. And this matters.
Because Obamacare is loaded with “poison pills”, so it will almost certainly be thrown out in its entirety by the Supreme Court.
This means the new, *Republican* congress can either recreate Medicare from scratch, or just by doing nothing, people will have to go back to paying for their own medical care. Granted, at half the cost of government provided care, and no way the insurance companies can pay for it.
And even if the Republicans buckle under ceaseless assault by the socialists and RINOs, it won’t matter, because there will be no way to pay for a reanimated Medicare. It just can’t be done.
So as a nation, at least as far as health care goes, we have an abrupt return to a free market.
...eh, you left out the most important step Susan...Tort Reform.
Can someone simply pay cash to a doctor in such a situation?
LOL You're darned right, Susan. You're head is empty - full of air.
Now that you've identified the problem what will you do about it?
Susan missed the most important feature of the new health bill. By cutting reimbursement rates for private insurance it’ll make Medicare’s rates the standard. Doctors who are dumping Medicare patients are just buying time. The ultimate goal is to reduce us all to the same low standard.
Thanks for posting this. Perhaps Ms. Estrich will have more of the veil pulled from her eyes as she deals with medicare
I had an appt. a few days ago and I had been used to paying $75.00 for an office call, my former employer's insurance plan pays nothing on office calls. Since I am new to medicare, my deductible hadn't been met yet, so I had to pay the max that medicare would have paid, that number was $63.99. After my deductible is met I will be paying 20% of that figure.
A difference of $11.00 in what my doc gets is not a lot but she did say she has lots of medicare patients.
It a fairly big operation with 4 docs working there plus nurses, a nurse practitioner and various staff - lots of overhead. I'm sure that accepting medicare patients is factored in to the fee structure, in other words, younger patients are picking up the slack caused by us old coots. Don't jump on me about it, I didn't invent the social security/ medicare/ medicaid monstrosity, nor do I participate willingly.
I have a private pension plus social security, plus 401k that I alone paid into and converted upon retirement, my wife still works and gets a very healthy pay check.
My former employer requires me to be on medicare or I lose all my retirement benefits from them, including insurance and besides, everyone get back to me if you reach s.s. age and want to retire and you refuse to accept that check or don't accept medicare.
It simply an awful, socialist system that I was forced to pay into all my working life and needs to be scuttled.
Like I see so many others say on this forum, just give me back all the money I paid in over the years (forget about interest), and many of those years I paid the max and I will consider signing off on ever getting any more ss benefits.
The current crisis came about when to balance Medicaid budgets, government bean counters ceased making cost adjustments to account for inflation and new technology and have literally cut reimbursement in others. At present Medicare reimbursements for some DRGs are about 20% less than the cost of providing the service. Hence some providers are avoiding Medicare patients or restricting the number of Medicare patients.
The odds of Susan connecting the dots of this problem to SOCIALISM(democrat party/liberalism/progressives) are remote..
Estrich is occasionally pseudo-honest.
Unfortunately, she can never bring herself to the logical conclusions her observations demand.