No amount of reform will change things as long as the Medicare reimbursement formula stays put:
Many prices will be too high or too low, and political forces tend to keep inappropriate prices in place — specialists in fields with excessive payments will resist cuts, and there will not be enough specialists in low-paid fields to become an effective counterlobby. New physicians will react to existing prices, and so the misallocation of human resources will be self-perpetuating.
Related posts:
- Looking for Medicare reimbursement relief?
- Medicare fee cuts
- Charging patients for Medicare cuts
- Medicare cuts: This politician gets it
- What a cut in Medicare reimbursement really means
- Medicare reimbursement and Congress games
- Medicare cuts: A 6-month stay of execution
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last line from the online article at wsj.com: “Will health-care reformers — and American citizens — get the message?”
The answer is a resounding NO, as the same “reformers”, and the lay public in general, will spew about access for uninsured & other irrelevant garbage, when there will be a 1/20 ratio of endocrinologists to cardiologists in 10 yrs, even as diabetes explodes in prevalence & heart disease becomes more effectively treated with non-invasive approaches (ie. meds).
simple economics dictate motivation, even as applies to choice of specialty – it’s easy to see why med students avoid primary care, endocrinology, rheumatology when you make $60-$80 for a 30-min office visit, and somebody else makes $500 to have a tech perform an echocardiogram, both with the same number of years of training (duh!)
the problem with this system, while being talked about lots now, will only be truly addressed when it’s too late to make a difference.
Then I guess one way to practice would be to opt out of medicare, take cash only. This, of course, will screw people at the bottom/middle of the economic spectrum.
If this is the key to what will make doctors happy, why is it that the only thing you see them really protesting and organizing for is tort reform? Is it because there is no insurer to prod them on reimbursements?
And Kevin should probably clarify “reform”, or at least narrow it. When he speaks about reform, he’s referring to making physicians more money – not that there is anything wrong with that. When others do, it often has to do with access to care and such.
“Tort reform” is not the only thing doctors are protesting for, but the media would have you believe that. I hear George Bush talk about tort reform every day on the subject of healthcare. And thats because insurance companies pay for his campaigns!!!
Dont confuse media hype with what doctors are REALLY pissed about, which is low reimbursement and insurance company tactics of denying payment.
What is needed to save both qualtiy medicine and medicare is a return to freedom: The government pays what it wants and the doctor charges what he wants.
Were that the case, I would take the Medicare payment for my financially more limited patients. But I refuse to be hornswoggled into giving charity discounts to rich old men with ten times as much money as I will ever have. The only way to do that with the unconstitutional rules now is to opt out entirely.
We need to lobby congress to stop interfering without right to balance bill, or start disobeying the unjust and frankly unconstitutional rules against it.
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