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We, as physicians, simply see very few, if any, medicare patients. This, for me, will result in higher revenues for our clinic, as we simply break even with medicare.
Who loses? Medicare patients with markedly reduced access to specialists. Did anyone really think that cutting $750 billion from medicare would have no consequences?
Wattaya mean 'we' Whiteman? <LOL>
We, well a bunch of us in primary care see tons of Medicare patients. And we have been seeing significant bonuses these last few years with the EMR. And now a serious bump in revenues with the Annual Wellness Visits. Not nearly the gold mine of course as back in the '80's, but Medicare still pays our bills and then some. And so far from my perspective no problemos with specialist access.
Newsflash! All people over 65 have Medicare. There are millions (46) who were without ANY health coverage. I agree, let's quit padding the pockets of insurance companies. It is time for a national healthcare insurance plan, a.k.a. Medicare for all.
Newsflash! The electorate is mostly made of people either already eligible for medicare, medicaid, or tricare or with private insurance through their employer. The first group will see some combination of their taxes go up, benefits go down, or national debt (eventually causing one [or more] of the former or inflation in a bigger way) increasing for no benefit to them. The second group will mostly see their taxes go up and benefits get worse (20% coinsurance and no caps in traditional fee-for-service medicare) unless you let them buy Medicare Advantage plans...which I doubt you mean from your anti-private-sector vitriol.
You are advocating for a substantial hit to the living standards of most Americans.
Actually, Medicare was established because insurance companies would not insure people 65 and older. Medical bills were the number one cause of poverty of senior citizens.
In 1997 Congress established Med Pac to analyze access to care, costs and quality of care affecting Medicare. Med Pac advises Congress on payments to health plans participating in Medicare Advantage and traditional fee for service programs.
The same folk who identify opportunities for Wall Street also consult for hospitals and look for new business opportunities to make more money out of the system.
Forbes did an article on the recent changes proposed by Med Pac, last June.
"Right now, when a doctor works as part of hospital owned practice, and bills Medicare, she’s paid moremoney than what she’d receive for providing the same services in her own independent medical office. That’s because of an arbitrage between Medicare’s inpatient (Part A) and outpatient (Part B) billing schemes.
In part to take advantage of these differentials, hospitals have gone on a buying binge in recent years, purchasing doctor practices. One of their aims was to bring the physicians’ services (and the procedures that doctors perform) under the “Part A†reimbursement scheme, where they can bill at higher rates forthe same services. In fact, for hospitals, outpatient services are among their highest profit centers (typically, along with neonatal intensive care units and spine surgery).
Back in 2012, Romney/Ryan tried to get some mileage out of these cuts.
The CBO projected Medicare spending over the next 10 years will be about $7.5 trillion. This means the ACA’s Medicare cuts account for less than 10% of overall Medicare spending. The program is not being gutted. Even with the ACA cuts, the CBO says the cost of Medicare is expected to grow from about $500 billion in 2012 to nearly $900 billion by 2022.
As for the cuts, they come from eliminating a massive subsidy to private insurers and gradually reducing the rate of growth in payments to some providers.
Medicare payments have outstripped income for decades and the can has been kicked forward, all along. The elephant in the room was guaranteed to land in the lap of whomever was president in 2010, the year the oldest baby boomers began to turn 65.
Interestingly, the proposed Ryan budget that Romney sort of endorsed at the time, called for the repeal of the ACA — except the reductions in Medicare spending according to analysts with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
Newsflash! The electorate is mostly made of people either already eligible for medicare, medicaid, or tricare or with private insurance through their employer. The first group will see some combination of their taxes go up, benefits go down, or national debt (eventually causing one [or more] of the former or inflation in a bigger way) increasing for no benefit to them. The second group will mostly see their taxes go up and benefits get worse (20% coinsurance and no caps in traditional fee-for-service medicare) unless you let them buy Medicare Advantage plans...which I doubt you mean from your anti-private-sector vitriol.
You are advocating for a substantial hit to the living standards of most Americans.
No, I am advocating for some sort of healthcare coverage for all. You want people and their families to be without medical care just so that you wont have to take a slight tax increase?
]If Obamacare was such a great benefit, then you wouldnt need it to be "sold", people would be breaking down doors protesting in the street to sign up.[/b]. There would be marches on Washington demanding the website be fixed NOW.. Business leaders would be leading movements to abandon the 1 year waiver they received..
Did government need to orchestrate this "one million mothers"? If not, your example falls flat on its face..
... especially with the perceived (or created) crisis of so many millions of people being without health care last year.
No, I am advocating for some sort of healthcare coverage for all. You want people and their families to be without medical care just so that you wont have to take a slight tax increase?
If you're advocating for some sort of healthcare coverage for all that isn't "slightly" expensive, it's massively expensive, even relative to the size of our current government and economy as a whole. Thus efficiency matters. A lot. Government - as witnessed by for example comparing Medicare Advantage to traditional Fee For Service, Medicaid with and without managed care, etc. - does a bad job of controlling costs as the payer. If you want universal care without breaking the bank, you're talking something like universal medicaid managed care, not Fee For Service Medicare.
A friend of mine finally today got signed up under the ACA following losing her current medical insurance because of the ACA. Originally her monthly premium was $186, her deductible was ZERO and her copay was $2 a visit. All of her medical needs were met under her old plan. Now under one of the exchange plans, her premium is $216 a month, her deductible is $5800 a year and she has no copay. What this basically means for her is she has gone from very good insurance to having only a catastrophe plan for a greater out of pocket expenditure both monthly and a huge deductible. In other words, short of a major illness, she now has no insurance for general health care. No more trips to the doctor for infections or wounds. No more trips to the doctor for immunizations. No more trips to the doctor for anything other than a life threatening emergency. Is this what we really have in mind for our people? She is on a fixed income and can't afford a better plan. All of this, for what? So Sandra Flock can be promiscuous? Hell of a price to pay. I hope all of you that pushed for this are happy with what you have done to millions of other american citizens. This will create situations where people will die for the lack of adequate health care under this plan. Is this what you really wanted? Well, it's what you voted for. Congratulations.
Last edited by freightshaker; 12-17-2013 at 06:47 PM..
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