Medicare

[buffdoc]

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I hope nobody minds that I’m posting this question in the anesthesiology forum. It’s the place that makes most sense to me, for some reason.

As most people on this forum and on SDN in general strongly oppose socialized medicine, what about medicare? Medicare is a lesser form of socialized medicine.

It seems to me that recent attempts by the government to reduce physician reimbursement under medicare may be an attempt to reduce the efficacy of the program and force beneficiaries to purchase their own private supplemental insurance. In short, this would eventually get the government out of the healthcare business. There was a similar attempt to privatize social security, but the attempt failed because democrats couldn’t accept the toppling of their most prized socialist government program.

But medicare, while probably not a favorite health insurer to physicians, and estimated to go bankrupt by 2019 according to some estimates, is being propped up by the AMA and physicians who don’t want reimbursements to drop by 10%. Maybe it would be better if the system just collapsed?

 

[Dr Serenity]

Not sure how to answer the op's questions regarding medicare...sure is a mess...

I will say this...not only has the gov't been trying to REDUCE physician reimbursements under Medicare, it also tends to INCREASE payments to hospitals (and other non-physician providers, I think...) every year.

ALSO, most insurance companies base their payouts to physicians on what Medicare pays out...if Medicare payouts to physicians go down, so do payouts from private insurers.

Presents a problem to docs each time the gov't tries to decrease Medicare payments to 'em...

What to do about it (besides short term band-aid fixes)...right now, I can't say I have the answers at the moment...sure is a mess...

 

[Coastie]

We should have never gotten into medicare. It is socialized medicine for old folks, still balanced out by a private sector.

As the gov't opens up to more mid-levels via medicare, docs will get squeezed, others salaries will go up, and it'll be a huge gang-up politically to take out the docs. After all, it will appear that socialized medicine will be stickin' to "the man" while enriching the sheeple. Typical class-warfare type of chess game played by the socialists..

Forcing collapse is an interesting proposition. I'm afraid at this point, though, we need to gradually change it. It's too entrenched to allow a pure collapse. Besides, it won't collapse, physician salaries will, and insurance companies will just follow the lead of medicare. I say refuse to take medicare if you're a PCP and work through legislation to change the system. Besides, when things go single payer, United Health will be first in line (their medical directors already speak to this) to be the distributers of the government buck. You know, with a % skim of course..

I hope nobody minds that I'm posting this question in the anesthesiology forum. It's the place that makes most sense to me, for some reason.

As most people on this forum and on SDN in general strongly oppose socialized medicine, what about medicare? Medicare is a lesser form of socialized medicine.

It seems to me that recent attempts by the government to reduce physician reimbursement under medicare may be an attempt to reduce the efficacy of the program and force beneficiaries to purchase their own private supplemental insurance. In short, this would eventually get the government out of the healthcare business. There was a similar attempt to privatize social security, but the attempt failed because democrats couldn't accept the toppling of their most prized socialist government program.

But medicare, while probably not a favorite health insurer to physicians, and estimated to go bankrupt by 2019 according to some estimates, is being propped up by the AMA and physicians who don't want reimbursements to drop by 10%. Maybe it would be better if the system just collapsed?