It’s never a problem, until it affects you.
Baby Boomers are going to be Medicare beneficiaries within the next few years, and some are finding out how difficult it is to find a primary care doctor.
Nationwide, about 30 percent of Medicare patients had difficulty finding a primary care physician during the past year.
As one patient puts it, “I must have made 12 calls before I could nail it down . . . One or two weren’t taking new patients at all, but the vast majority were just not taking Medicare. And they were taking other forms of insurance.”
This demographic needs to continue to speak up. Politicians don’t read my blog, nor do they pay much attention to doctors. The Medicare beneficiaries however, carry weight, and need to clearly communicate the dire repercussions of inadequate primary care access.
Related posts:
- Once you hit Medicare age, good luck finding a primary care doctor
- Should primary care doctors embrace retail clinics?
- Foreign medical graduates and mid-levels will provide the majority of tomorrow’s primary care
- Margaritaville, or not doing primary care
- Primary care-specialty income gap: It’s worse than we think
- How to drive a doctor out of primary care
- Academia responsible for the primary care shortage?
{ 8 comments }
In the climate of everyone needing a bailout, I wonder whether the response will simply be to make accepting Medicare mandatory. It has been done already in some states as a condition for licensure (in fact not just accepting Medicare, but accepting assignment to boot.) If you go belly-up or starve on the way there, oh well.
They may try to make Medicare mandatory to please the single payer militants but that will just speed up the collapse of primary care as the older docs shut down their private practices and retire.
Besides, they don’t have enough money for Medicare even with low primary care pay. Physicians declining to take Medicare helps slow the collapse of Medicare in some ways:
http://whitecoatrants.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/botique-medicine-medicares-savior/
The leftists will push for making it mandatory as more opt out. They have stopped just short of that with the, in my opinion, unconstitutional opt out provisions.
What they should do to save it, is go back to fully allowing people to balance bill or not at their option on a case by case basis as in the early days. That would best save Medicare because most doctors would then charge their regular fee to those who could afford it and accept the Medicare fee as full for those who can’t.
Now, they are forced to extend the “charity” of cut rate service to even the well-off elderly. Over half the wealth in America is owned by those over 65. Most don’t need to make docs their personal slaves. It is this unfairness which motivates much of the flight from Medicare.
What took so long? Primary care doctors should have opted out a long time ago. Accepting derisory payment for services that go for far more on the open market is a distortion of that market. And such distortions do not go unpunished for long, as we have seen. Yes, I know, the handwringing will begin; “But, we’re SUPPOSED to be taking care of those who need it most!” Can’t do that without an office, can you, Sparky? Those who provide your office, electricity and supplies aren’t doing it for charity, and appeals to the morality of your stance go unheard in bankrupcy court.
Seriously, who needs the paperwork and hassle for such little reward?
in 1986 the government made treatment mandatory for ER’s and hospitals. It was not funded. Next step is they will mandate it for all docs. It might become a condition of recieving your license or diploma.
The collapse of medicine will make the current economic collapse look like a pimple.
Mandatory participation in medicare and medicaid, or whatever government program comes out of this current push for reform, will kill specialty care as well. I don’t know any specialists who consider medicare anything but a loss leader. But remember that mandatory participation was part of Hillary’s plan for reform in 1994. It is also the case in Canada. Its probably unconstitutional, but we will be killed off while we wait for relief from the courts.
I have had two doctors in the past year opt out of Medicare. If I want to see one of them his fee is @$250 for a visit. This is unconscionable. This after having a long establishedd professional relationship with these physicians. I know that doctors plead they can’t afford to provide services at the rate of Medicare reimbursement. But these are doctors who drive two Lexus, home in the Hamptons, and dinner at Le Bernardin, and season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. Seems to me for that portion of their practice that is over 65 they can sacrifice a bit – these arepeople who live on pensions, SS, 401K’s and thelike. I suggest that Congress pass a law requiring hospitals that receive federal aid to certify that all their attending physicians accept Medicare else the federal funding would be cut off. Hey – doctors at these hospitals can opt to tell the feds – keep your money – but I doubt they would do that. We have to fight back and get doctors to live up to the oath they took when they became doctors.
A blogger has states here that some states have made acceptance of Medicaid a condition of medical licensure. What states are those, and what has been the outcome?
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