Look What Massachusetts Has To Say About HCR!!
Oh Massachusetts! I do love you– I spent a fabulous decade in your deepest recesses during my training days. You have been the object of so much adoration by Mr. Obama that I have often wondered how truly special you must have felt. 97% population coverage for “insurance”, a progressive State– showing all the rest of us how it’s done! Everyone loved you– everyone adored you. Sure, a few neighsayers noted some things that you’d rather have swept under the rug: more insured, less access to care, providers dropping out of Medicare, the State considering forcing doctors to participate in Medicare as a condition of licensing, a sweeping overhaul of doctor payments on the table. All of these showed the world that maybe your ideas are not so great after all.
Well, none other than The Boston Globe, a bastion of the Boston-old-machine-Democrat Elite jabbed you squarely, and firmly on the nose today. They write about how the Mayo Clinic (another object of love by Mr. Obama) is stopping taking Medicare patients and will force about 3000 current patients to now pay cash– or move on to new care.
So perhaps the president will give some thought to the clinic’s recent decision to stop accepting Medicare payments at its primary care facility in Glendale, Ariz. More than 3,000 patients will have to start paying cash if they wish to continue being seen by doctors at the clinic; those unable or unwilling to do so must look for new physicians. For now, Mayo is limiting the change in policy to its Glendale facility. But it may be just a matter of time before it drops Medicare at its other facilities in Arizona, Florida, and Minnesota as well.
As we noted in a prior post, this is because Mayo loses about 3/4 of a billion dollars per year on Medicare patients. This is an issue elsewhere: In 2008, the independent Medicare Payment Advisory Commission reported that 29 percent of Medicare beneficiaries – more than 1 in 4 – have trouble finding a primary-care doctor willing to treat them. A survey by the Texas Medical Association that year found that only 38 percent of the state’s primary-care physicians were accepting new Medicare patients. The Globe goes on to write:
But if you think that sounds grim, wait until Congress enacts the president’s health care overhaul. A central element of both the House and Senate versions of ObamaCare is that Medicare reimbursements to hospitals and doctors – already so low that many providers lose money each time they treat a Medicare patient – will be forced lower still. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the US Department of Health and Human Services, estimated last month that the Senate bill would squeeze $493 billion out of Medicare over the next 10 years.
Get this: CMS warned Congress this was a bad idea. Sad no one seemed to listen.
As a result, it cautioned, “providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and . . . might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries).’’ In short, the Democratic understanding of health care reform – more government power to set prices, combined with reduced freedom for individuals – will make medical care harder to come by: an Economics 101 lesson in the pitfalls of price controls.
There’s more:
Medicare’s price tag has skyrocketed from $3 billion in 1966 to $453 billion this year. Yet its reimbursement of medical providers is so meager that more and more of them cannot afford to treat Medicare patients.
Whatever else Medicare might be, it is no model for rational reform.
Wow. Even the most loved and adored among us recognize infatuation when they see it.
In a related post; Bloomberg tells us that Congress is planning on raising Medicare taxes in order to pay for HCR. That is, they are going to charge the earners more money to fund a system that is bankrupt and is so ominous that doctors do not even want to care for the patients the program is set up to assist. Sounds like a winning plan to us!
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
Leave your response!