[Iowa Granny]

They are being reimbursed via medicare much less than what procedures cost and instead, are leaving medicine in droves.

Point well taken.

Physicians I have talked to continue to complain about the high cost of malpractice insurance,, would this only be an Iowa thing? Perhaps so.

I'm glad you mentioned the medicare reimbursement issue. I believe BC/BS negotiates down the fees they pay, as well. At least they did on my surgery.

[Utah Girl]

I now work on medical coding and reimbursement software (I test it.) I put symptons and procedures in and the program spits out reimbursement. Incredible how little Medicare pays and that is now what insurance companies are keying off of, medicare reimbursement. I was doing some codes the other day, and put in that the patient was constipated, and watched the reimbursement go up by $3000.00. There just isn't any common sense to a lot of it.