I don’t think he is bluffing at all and would take advantage of any opportunity to reduce physicians to a state of involuntary servitude as is the case in many nations.

As far as I know, that applies even if you are not in Medicare, as in, opted-out. We had to sign that attestation on our license application and renewal forms.

But it’s been a long time since I practiced in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts.

Is that true?

We need to work on our public relations, explain to patients and local businesses why we can’t continue to accept low payment payers and stay in business. If we let the Stark and his allies paint us as simply greedy docs, they can screw us far worse than they are now by mandating Medicare participation.

Simple solution to problem-don’t allow doctors to decide how many Medicare patients they will take on. In other words accept all Medicare patients or you don’t accept any. Many doctors like to use Medicare patients to fill in their billing schedule for the day. From my personal experience Medicare pays a fair price for services rendered.

Here is another comment:

A first step in restoring professional ethics would be to revoke the federal DEA prescribing privileges of physicians who fail to certify annually that they accept patients with publicly supported medical coverages or fail to participate in audits of their patient populations.

I think that this is what Pete Stark is aiming for: force physicians to reject Medicare patients, increase voter resentment towards physicians who refuse Medicare patients while insinuating that greed is the motivation, and eventually legislate indentured servitude onto all physicians in the United States so that it is impossible to practice medicine in the U.S. without accepting whatever the government forces upon physicians.

If it is Medicare-specific, more likely than not doctors would be glad to reject all Medicare patients for the sake of simplicity and the decrease in overhead related to Medicare payments. Unfortunately the public does not yet understand this, and the antagonism which Pete Stark is stirring up against physicians over this is not helping the situation. Neither is the insolvency which Medicare will encounter in 11 years.

Well, Pete, now what? Oh, and Pete, you should know that this is only the beginning. Access will drop lie a stone if your 10.4% payment reduction occurs.

Nice move, Pete.