Comments on: Medi-Cal cuts http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2008/02/medi-cal-cuts.html medical blog Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:15:05 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Anonymous http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2008/02/medi-cal-cuts.html/comment-page-1#comment-83710 Anonymous Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:22:00 +0000 http://clients.emmense.com/kevinmd/2008/02/medi-cal-cuts.html#comment-83710 Why is it that people always assume doctors can hike up the fees to paying customers when Medicaid or Medicare cuts reimbursement? In a free-market, yes, but being a practicing physician isn't a free market except for a very select few. Insurance companies and HMOs will usually tell you how much they will reimburse unless you are a large multigroup practice with leverage. It's rare for the physician to hike up fees in response to medicaid cuts and expect those higher fees to actually materialized (except for cash paying customers). The only reasonable alternatives is to stop seeing Medicaid/Medicare patients.<br/><br/>Good thing the 2% tax on doctors didn't go through in California as originally proposed Why is it that people always assume doctors can hike up the fees to paying customers when Medicaid or Medicare cuts reimbursement? In a free-market, yes, but being a practicing physician isn’t a free market except for a very select few. Insurance companies and HMOs will usually tell you how much they will reimburse unless you are a large multigroup practice with leverage. It’s rare for the physician to hike up fees in response to medicaid cuts and expect those higher fees to actually materialized (except for cash paying customers). The only reasonable alternatives is to stop seeing Medicaid/Medicare patients.

Good thing the 2% tax on doctors didn’t go through in California as originally proposed

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