Good post. I most heartily agree with you. In November 2011, I was the target of a Medicare audit. It’s been almost a year later, and the auditors have yet to file a claim against me. In the mean time, I have had to spend 40 k and climbing on attorney bills, internal audits etc. This type of intimidation is at the very heart of 0bama and his totalitarian socialist regime. Since November, I have stopped seeing new Medicare patients, and I have released well over 70% of my existing Medicare patients. If 0bama is re-elected, I thinks it’s safe to say that Medicare audits and compliance will become even more dangerous and onerous in which case I will be done with Medicare. It will be foolish for small groups and solo practitioners to continue to see Medicare patients because of the very real regulatory risk, high compliance costs and low reimbursement. This will force Medicare patients to see providers in large hospital groups instead of small groups and solo practices which still comprise about 45% of physician manpower. Physicians are an able and adaptable group. Those remaining in private practice will gravitate towards other practice models; Boutique, cash pay, consultant work (IMEs, insurance), alternative medicine, personal injury/ legal cases. Some highly skilled specialists (neurosurgeons, orthopods, cardiac) may even be able to demand high fees per case as independent contractors for hospital groups that are unable to attract these specialists as employees. Still other physicians may be able to weather the regulatory risk, litigation risk and low reimbursement by running a stable of ‘mid levels’ (PAs, NPs) providing low quality cookbook care to patients on a medical assembly line.
BTW, AAPS is an excellent physician advocacy group and I am a member.
To be honest about it, although I wouldn't doubt that the Obama regime has amped up Medicare fraud prosecutions and "recovery" efforts from allegedly cheating "providers," the federal government has been heavily into this kind of thing since the Reagan Administration and maybe even before.
It seems like a popular political program even for "conservatives" in Washington, who can ignore the injustice of it while treating it as a cost-saving measure, a rare one with little risk of political backlash (in their way of thinking), since physicians and other "providers" and their families account for such a small percentage of the electorate are not considered very politically astute or influential.