Medicare for All Specialties

[7331poas]

What specialties do you expect will be hit the least/most by Medicare for All? I am sure that an outright passage of the bill is unlikely, but in any case I think the country will become more accepting of the idea in the coming decades.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[james5848]

Medicare was created with the aim of working with citizens of retirement age who want to solve health problems. The program is fully funded by corporate income tax, progressive income tax, and payroll tax. Due to its existence, hospital systems everywhere receive part of their income, up to about half of the budget of these institutions are revenues from the Medicare program.

 

[NickNaylor]

A fundamental change in how healthcare services are paid for would affect all specialties. No one knows for sure what would happen, but given the overall tenor of the rhetoric of the Democratic candidates, it would likely be paired with "cost reduction" - independent of any bureaucratic savings that might come from increased efficiency of the system - AKA reduction in reimbursements. Overall, I'm guessing that there would be a narrowing of the range of salaries across specialties, with lower-paying specialties getting a slight bump and higher-paying specialties seeing a significant cut.

But who actually knows. The devil is in the details, and even with the details it can be difficult to predict what the effects to large, complicated systems will actually be.

 

[Epilepsy365]

Will be similar to the military or VA salaries right now:

180-220K for primary care
300-400K for high paying subspecialties

 

[fasteddie911]

If we're only talking about reimbursements, and if nothing else changes, non-procedural specialties or those relying on E/M billing will likely suffer the least. So primary care and related subspecialties. Private insurance often offer minimal to no advantage (and sometimes a disadvantage) for those CPT codes.

 

[libertyyne]

Will be similar to the military or VA salaries right now:

180-220K for primary care
300-400K for high paying subspecialties

The military sallaries are a function of private practice supply of physicians. I wouldn't bet the barn on those numbers.


Who knows what the world would look like?

Procedure driven specialties will likely be impacted the most, surgical subs and gi come to mind.

 

[VA Hopeful Dr]

The military sallaries are a function of private practice supply of physicians. I wouldn't bet the barn on those numbers.


Who knows what the world would look like?

Procedure driven specialties will likely be impacted the most, surgical subs and gi come to mind.

It'll likely be a slow move from our current rates to somewhere closer to what Europe pays. How close and how quickly we will get there are the big questions.

 

[Lawpy]

This is impossible to predict due to various political and legal reasons. Also we don't know if the M4A supporters will even win the nomination, much less the election so there isn't a reason to worry about this now.

 

[7331poas]

This is impossible to predict due to various political and legal reasons. Also we don't know if the M4A supporters will even win the nomination, much less the election so there isn't a reason to worry about this now.

There absolutely is need to worry about this now. I wont even be out of fellowship by the time the next 2 presidential terms are over.

The question is long term. And M4A is a long term certainty.

 

[Lawpy]

There absolutely is need to worry about this now. I wont even be out of fellowship by the time the next 2 presidential terms are over.

The question is long term. And M4A is a long term certainty.

I can't be that confident seeing the current strong opposition to ACA for justified reasons. M4A appears to be an even worse approach that arose from primary talking points. There are a lot of major hurdles to overcome from congress, courts and public. Hence why i'm not focusing on it now unless things change dramatically in the future where M4A is inevitable.