Dropping Medicare patients

This is what you get for cutting physician reimbursements:

Scott says spine surgeons and some other specialists have already stopped taking Medicare users, mostly because they can’t afford to see “low-margin patients.”

General practitioners and internists may soon follow suit if a new reimbursement formula isn’t implemented, he says.

State Sen. Robert Singer (R-Ocean County), who sits on the Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee, says low Medicare reimbursement rates are hurting “the family practice doctor, the internist, the bread-and-butter doctors, who by the way don’t make a gazillion dollars a year. We keep forgetting doctors are small-business people.”

Don’t say I didn’t tell you so. (via The Medical Quack)