Medi-Cal and Medicare reimbursements to this ENT physician gets delayed (due to bureaucracy, big surprise), so he quits seeing these patients:
Poirier said he drew down his personal savings to cover $6,000 to $7,000 in monthly expenses for rent, office staff and other bills while waiting for the government reimbursements. Medi-Cal and Medicare each owe him about $30,000, he said. About 70 percent of his patients were in the government health programs, he said.
Yup, Medicare-for-all looks really good right about now.
Related posts:
- Squeezing physician reimbursements: A vicious cycle
- The government has already proven itself
- Medi-Cal cuts
- The idiocy of cutting physician reimbursements
- Medical office rents: A "career-ender"
- Finding a doctor who accepts Medicare
- An attempt to stave off government-controlled health care
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I know that guy. I worked with him. He’s a weird guy. Small world reading about him.
Aetna goes furthur by lying to it’s providers what is owed to them, despite fee schedules. PA Medical Society just found out.
It is time for us to simply separate ourselves from insurance contracting as a means of reimbursement. Set your price and accept insurance only up to the amount it pays and when it pays. Don’t accept payment in arrears. Have the insurance company pay the patient directly or you may refund the patient when you receive payment from the insurance company. Accept cash, checks, or credit cards as the only acceptable means of payment, and make payment due at the time of service. You are not a bank and should not be lending money interest free to insurance companies or the federal government.
I am dropping Medicaid at the end of this year, for the same reasons. I can now join the majority (great majority, actually) of my colleagues who have already done the same.
Medicaid is in many places a scam perpetrated on both the public and on the participating doctors. It takes money in taxes paid by working citizens and promises a certain level of care to those ruled “eligible” that it does not really provide, because it does not really pay in an amount or with a reliability that most doctors can accept.
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