Forcing Doctors To Accept Medicare And Medicaid Patients

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emd123

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http://masonconservative.typepad.co...to-accept-medicare-and-medicaid-patients.html

"You would think that when your party is burying a hole that is getting harder and harder to get out of, you wouldn't want to that hole get deeper faster. But here is Kathleen Murphy, Democrat running for the House of Delegates against Barbara Comstock, telling a forum in Great Falls that she believes it should law to force doctors to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients. Forced by government decree, mind you. A birdie sent me this:

FYI last night at the Great Falls Grange debate, Democrat delegate candidate Kathleen Murphy said that since many doctors are not accepting medicaid and medicare patients, she advocates making it a legal requirement for those people to be accepted.
She did not recognize that the payments are inadequate to cover the doctors' costs. She also did not recognize there is a shortage of over 45,000 physicians now and that it is forecast to be 90,000 in a few years.
Democrats appear to want to make physicians slaves of the state, but Democrats don't admit they would just drive more doctors out of practice into retirement and other occupations. The Obamacare law and regulations are causing millions of people to lose their health insurance, drop many doctors and hospitals. The HHS internal forecast is 93 million Americans would lose their health insurance due to the Obamacare law and rules about adequacy of insurance.
Many more people will be uninsured. The penalties for being uninsured start at $95 per year, but the penalties can't be collected by the IRS if a person does not have a tax refund to attach.
The out of pocket costs required by Obamacare's Silver Plan for a non-smoking mother and father with two children making a gross before income taxes of $50,000 (roughly average salary for VA) would be $13,765 per year including the deductible of $10,400. That's 28% of their gross income -- not very affordable and about the same as guidelines for a mortgage payment. For such a family making $100,000 of gross income, The cost would be $21,431 including the deductible of $12,700, or 21% of gross income.
With such high deductibles doctors are stuck with trying to collect cash from the patients, even at regulated charge structures. Thus is makes sense for primary care doctors not to participate in Obamacare, medicare and medicaid. They should encourage patients to participate in Concierge Care and insurance programs run by the doctors themselves with patients who can do simple math. Patients can take out catastrophic insurance with high deductibles for major surgeries. Tax deductability for individual medical savings accounts would make health care more affordable.

The head of Obamacare programs, Berwick, loves the socialized medical system in the UK, but never mentions that malpractice insurance is minimal. In the UK, panels of doctors review and approve malpractice awards, rather than emotional juries misled by trial lawyers. Malpractice reform like this with caps on malpractice awards would go a long way in making health care affordable.
I hope physicians rise up and speak out for common sense, protecting quality medical care in the US and giving patients freedom to choose


THIS along with the fact that Terry McAuliffe has already said he'd go to the government shutdown mat to get a state exchange in Virginia. Unbelievable. Combine the chaos of thousands of people across Virginia losing their health insurance, we are going to add to that on the state level by forcing doctors to accept patients they can't afford to help? Unbelievable. Dark days are ahead, but there is still time. Three days to make sure this does not happen.

Democrats in Virginia will drive up health care costs, drive doctors out of the state, and then drive health care costs up even more because there will not be enough doctors practicing in the state.

Vote Cuccinelli."

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McAuliffe seems very likely to win at this point, and I don't believe he'd try to force doctors to see those patients if they don't want to, regardless of what a single delegate says.
 
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I have always thought that this was gonna happen eventually or at least be up for discussion eventually. May happen sooner than later if a guy name Bernie gets elected..
 
This would not happen for a very long time. Private payers would never let it happen.
 
This would not happen for a very long time. Private payers would never let it happen.
If you are referring to Hawai'i, my pay (as EM) was in the 1st percentile nationwide (1st, not 99th), and a large part of that was from HMSA (BC/BS in HI) and Kaiser. The private payers have HI by the throat. One state first, then the dominoes start to fall.
 
If you are referring to Hawai'i, my pay (as EM) was in the 1st percentile nationwide (1st, not 99th), and a large part of that was from HMSA (BC/BS in HI) and Kaiser. The private payers have HI by the throat. One state first, then the dominoes start to fall.

That's because some docs will accept anything to be able to live in Hawaii

This is why the best pay is in the less desirable parts of the country. Competition isn't as fierce and insurance companies have to accept what large PP groups/hospitals negotiate or half of iowa/alabama won't have coverage for a particular medical specialty.
 
If you are referring to Hawai'i, my pay (as EM) was in the 1st percentile nationwide (1st, not 99th), and a large part of that was from HMSA (BC/BS in HI) and Kaiser. The private payers have HI by the throat.

Exactly: This is why the private payers will never let the legislation pass.
 
Exactly: This is why the private payers will never let the legislation pass.
Apollyon is making the point that Hawaii is a very unique market. There are 4 payers that matter: Medicare, HMSA (BCBS), Kaiser, and Tricare/VA. Medicare Advantage offered by both Kaiser and HMSA absolutely dominate the over-65 crowd. So these companies actually stand to benefit if Medicare is required. Consider a patient who is currently seeing a doctor that does not accept Medicare. Now the doctor has to accept Medicare so chances are about 100% that this well-off patient will sign up for HMSA (Medicare Advantage plan) or Kaiser. The companies win. I'm sure that these companies are pushing for this law because I see no advantage for anyone else.
 
Apollyon is making the point that Hawaii is a very unique market. There are 4 payers that matter: Medicare, HMSA (BCBS), Kaiser, and Tricare/VA. Medicare Advantage offered by both Kaiser and HMSA absolutely dominate the over-65 crowd. So these companies actually stand to benefit if Medicare is required. Consider a patient who is currently seeing a doctor that does not accept Medicare. Now the doctor has to accept Medicare so chances are about 100% that this well-off patient will sign up for HMSA (Medicare Advantage plan) or Kaiser. The companies win. I'm sure that these companies are pushing for this law because I see no advantage for anyone else.

Good point, but it would be a win only in the short term. If a law passes in any state mandating that physicians must accept medicare, then it risks beginning the momentum for a single payer system which would be a disadvantage for the insurers. Once the fire is started, it could become difficult to control. Then again, it's the big players that control government, so maybe they can control it.

Separately, while there is little cooperation among physicians, I think that if a law like this is passed, doctors will join forces and fight it. It will face a constitutional challenge - slavery was abolished more than 150 years ago. And ultimately, it's just bad medicine especially in this current healthcare environment. Physicians would retire from the field in massive numbers or scale back their practices significantly. Would you want to see a physician who was forced to take your insurance? Would you want to see a patient who you were forced to see? Can you imagine a waiting room full of medicaid patients telling you that you now had to prescribe them oxycodone?
 
It will face a constitutional challenge - slavery was abolished more than 150 years ago. And ultimately, it's just bad medicine especially in this current healthcare environment. Physicians would retire from the field in massive numbers or scale back their practices significantly.

Can you imagine a waiting room full of medicaid patients telling you that you now had to prescribe them oxycodone?

I would absolutely retire from clinical medicine and do something else if this happens
 
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