Lab Coat Politics
October 6th, 2009 Posted in National Healthcare, politicsA couple days ago the White House had an event with 150 or so doctors who supported its health care reform agenda.
From the NY Times, Doctors Are Opting Out of Medicare:
Many people, just as they become eligible for Medicare, discover that the insurance rug has been pulled out from under them. Some doctors — often internists but also gastroenterologists, gynecologists, psychiatrists and other specialists — are no longer accepting Medicare, either because they have opted out of the insurance system or they are not accepting new patients with Medicare coverage. The doctors’ reasons: reimbursement rates are too low and paperwork too much of a hassle.
At a time when doctors treating patients with private insurance are reimbursed an average of about Medicare plus 25% why would a physician get excited to shift to a government-run public option that was only going to pay Medicare plus 5%?
Will this lead our country’s most experienced doctors to call it quits and retire early? As a consumer do you want to be treated by a well-compensated physician or someone who is having to make his margins off of patient volume?
