Some troubling thoughts for the future of American medicine:
With these decreasing payments and increasing regulation, I think that there will be an increasing number of physicians opting out of Medicare in the next several years. Indeed, it would not surprise me if it becomes difficult to find a decent physician who will be willing to accept any Medicare-eligible patient, even with the world’s most generous secondary insurance. This is a difficult process to imagine for the Internist — the vast proportion of patients we care for are on Medicare. But if it costs more to provide the care than we can get reimbursed, then there is no future in seeing these folks. Kinda like the guy who said that even though he lost money on every business transaction, he would try to make up the difference by increasing his volume.
