Finding a doctor that accepts Medicare is getting increasingly difficult – a situation that will only worsen:
“One of the main culprits is the ‘overpromise/underfund’ dilemma of offering public health-care programs such as Medicaid (for the poor and disabled) and Medicare (for people 65 and over) without sufficient funding, then standing back as demand skyrockets.”As with most things in life, it gets down to dollars. Operating a physician practice is like any business that follows the economic rules of supply and demand, costs and revenues. Sometimes customers don’t like the outcomes, but if you’re a business trying to survive, there may be no alternative.
Related posts:
- The Medicare cuts are looming
- Accepting Medicare
- Classic post: Cut Medicare payments for doctors, you’ll have fewer doctors
- Cut Medicare payments for doctors, you’ll have fewer doctors
- Op-ed: Cut Medicare payments for doctors, you’ll have fewer doctors
- Finding a doctor who accepts Medicare
- Should doctors competitively bid for Medicare rates?
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{ 6 comments }
It gets worse. In California, Medicare is practically my best payor. Scary huh?
So I will advise my parents to move to California. If it is the best payor, they will find someone to take it.
ditto in NY – medicare is BY FAR the best payer, except perhaps aetna.
but blue cross, oxford, hip, ghi, and united are all just a hair above medicaid (for primary care anyway)
My best payor are patients–so I that is the only payor I contract with.
Happyman:
That is because too many primary care doctors have a martyr complex and feel guilty if they stick up for themselves. The let the insurance companies use the patients to put them on a guilt trip if they say no to a contract.
anon 5:38-
you’re absolutely right. also, the seemingly universal mentality that docs regularly peruse their contracts and renegotiate them is a farce.
the reality is either
1- you join a group and are out of the contract negotiations altogether; or
2- you start your own small practice, sign on to EVERY insurance plan you can from the beginning to build up quickly, sign on every dotted line without reading the fine print, and never look at your contract again. then when insurers send you these periodic “notices” of rate reductions etc. they go right in the trash or in your file cabinet.
In any major market (NY, boston, philly etc.) insurers rule. You just can’t survive if you refuse to take the major insurers, and they know that.
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