Who Didn't Seee This Coming?

[mzmadmike]

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news%2Fstate&id=8729292

Texas Medical Association survey given to The Associated Press over the weekend found that the number of Texas doctors willing to accept government-funded health insurance plans for the poor and the elderly has dropped dramatically amid complaints about low pay and red tape.

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Comments

[hugh_mannity]

I work for a physician hospital organisation. We don't "do" medicaid as an organisation because we operate on a risk-sharing basis with several HMOs. For a while we were taking Medicare Risk plan patients (i.e. people who were paying an HMO to cover stuff that Medicare didn't) but we don't do that anymore either.

The reason: cost. Medicare and Medicaid don't pay enough to make it worth the trouble of doing the paperwork and complying with the regulations.

It's not about profit, per se, it's about breaking even and making enough money to cover the bills and pay the office staff. The overheads for a doctor in independent practice these days are enormous -- malpractice insurance premiums are ridiculous. It can run an OB/Gyn over $100K/year -- assuming (s)he's never had a claim filed against him/her, regardless of the outcome. A doctor who's had a malpractice claim filed can pay double that, more if the claim was upheld.

Then there's the cost of compliance with all the various regulations. Plus, if you take Medicare/Medicaid and you file a "fraudulent" claim (where "fraudulent" includes making an accidental coding error) the fines are often out of proportion to the offence. Unless you're a professional Medicare defrauder, it's not worth the risk.

And I'm in that bastion of Romneycare and Liberalism: Massachusetts!