Doctor Fix Bill: Two links: newser/NYT

[Thiebear]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/health/policy/25medicare.html

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday approved a six-month plan to prevent a steep cut in doctors’ fees paid by Medicare, agreeing to a short-term solution that Speaker Nancy Pelosi called “totally inadequate” but said the House had decided to adopt after concluding that the Senate was hopelessly gridlocked and could do no better.

The vote in the House was 417 to 1, with just one Democrat, Representative George Miller of California, in opposition.

The $6.4 billion measure reverses a 21 percent cut in physician payments that had raised the possibility that some doctors might begin to turn away those covered by Medicare. The measure is retroactive to June 1.

http://www.newser.com/story/93278/more-doctors-turning-away-medicare-patients.html

“Physicians are saying, ‘I can’t afford to keep losing money,’” said the president of the group conducting the latter survey. Medicare paid doctors about 78% less than private insurers did in 2008, and that was before Congress allowed an automatic 21% cut to take hold on Friday—though the Senate has already approved a bill to undo that lapse.

1: They think they can cut doctors pay legislatively and then wonder why doctors stop taking those patients (the numbers are different in every article i've seen with 30% being around the lowest before the 21% that was going to kick in.)

2: They put it off to 'just' after the elections coincidence i'm sure.

Though to be fair they have been hiding this behind the scenes for years paying millions undoing the regulations they put in place.

[Fergasun]

If we have to cut it, lets make the cut. The "doctor fix" was excluded from all the estimates of health care costs. "Millions"? I think you mean "billions". The cost of the "doc fix" will be $276B over the next 10 years.

Quite frankly I'm all for calling their bluff. If you don't want to see patients under Medicare, see how well that works out for you. Sadly, I've never seen Congress call anyone's bluff.

[Bonez3]

If we have to cut it, lets make the cut. The "doctor fix" was excluded from all the estimates of health care costs. "Millions"? I think you mean "billions". The cost of the "doc fix" will be $276B over the next 10 years.

Quite frankly I'm all for calling their bluff. If you don't want to see patients under Medicare, see how well that works out for you. Sadly, I've never seen Congress call anyone's bluff.

Wow, imagine the bulk of your salary was diminished by 21% overnight.

This is no bluff, physicians would DEFINITELY stop seeing medicare pts.

Imagine...the most difficult and often sickest pts. just took 21% off of an already underwhelming amount. Scenrio- 'Granny' has 20 plus pills she takes, sees 6 specialists and has her 60 year old child with 2 pages of questions for you. Now you have 15mins uusually to 'soothe' all this. And when she gets ill, its not 'take 2 pills and call me in the morn'. More like 5-7 day hospital stay- in a good situation.

Yea sure, let the docs see these pts for less.

How bout we start regulating wall street, banking, offshore drilling a little more and stop worrying bout health care regulations so much.

[Special K]

Quite frankly I'm all for calling their bluff. If you don't want to see patients under Medicare, see how well that works out for you. Sadly, I've never seen Congress call anyone's bluff.

Well, it's already happened with Medicaid patients: there are several physicians I personally know who simply stopped accepting them in their practices. Other physicians significantly limited the number of new Medicaid patients they accepted.

I don't know the numbers, no one really does. But I can assure you, this is not a bluff.

[Thiebear]

MD Polling has shown significant decreases in taking on medicare patients due to cost.

[Special K]

MD Polling has shown significant decreases in taking on medicare patients due to cost.

No ****.

Again, I'll use Medicaid as an example. I billed for my dad's ortho office for a bit. Each Medicaid patient who walked into the office to be seen was an automatic loss of revenue for the practice. With overhead costs to the practice, I almost don't blame many doctors from dropping Medicaid from their practices...although personally, I wouldn't have been able to do that. My dad and his partner wouldn't either. But what they did was significantly cut down on the number of Medicaid new patients. If a person didn't have a surgically-indicated injury with a full work up (xrays, MRI, authorization) by the PCP, we wouldn't take them. They had to be surgery patients or trauma patients who came in through the ER and needed emergency surgery, my dad and his partner would always do the surgery and follow them up, but no more seeing Medicaid patients for unspecific knee pain or routine casting.

I don't quite know what these legislators are thinking. Medicare has already been significantly decreasing reimbursement. Medicare patients typically are much more difficult cases, like Bonez3 already pointed out, and the legislators think doctors are going to continue getting screwed with reimbursements, continue losing money and not being able to pay the overhead, and just take it? Yeah right.

God I hate Washington.