filing the claim is mere paperwork, that they don't accept/participate means you will pay BIGTIME to be seen/operated on when the bill comes...
Posted on 04/13/2014 10:00:28 AM PDT by Rusty0604
Doctors in Texas are showing us what a medical system without comprehensive insurance might look like. The NYT profiles the rise of Texan “direct primary care” practices that don’t accept insurance. Instead, patients pay flat fees out-of-pocket. In return, doctors save both time and money that they can then pass on to patients.
But there’s a catch here, as the article points out. Concierge medicine isn’t a new trend—we’ve covered it here before. But now that Obamacare is swelling the ranks of the comprehensively insured, doctors who don’t take insurance are increasing the pressure on the system. There’s a hint in the NYT piece that other doctors think it’s irresponsible for their colleagues to stop taking insurance just as the Obamacare rollout promises to strain practices and hospitals past capacity. This bias against innovators is what happens when federal legislation cements a dysfunctional system in place.
(Excerpt) Read more at the-american-interest.com ...
Haven’t you heard? The liberals are saying that Liberty is “un-American.”
Besides, just because the doctor “doesn’t accept insurance” only means he won’t process the claim. Unless the plan is network-only, the patients can just file it themselves, just like it always was in the old days before insurance companies got too big for their britches.
They will end up trying to strong-arm doctors into caring for Obamacare patients.
Doctors are a surly lot when anyone tries to monkey with their practice of medicine...and rightly so.
It won’t be easy to force MDs to do anything.
I predict hundreds of thousands of new doctors that can’t speak English.
filing the claim is mere paperwork, that they don't accept/participate means you will pay BIGTIME to be seen/operated on when the bill comes...
Face it Lib-Docs!... your gravey train is approaching the station!
I would guess that a huge portion of the cost of a medical office is the staff required to deal with insurance. Do away with that and the price distortion introduced as various companies decide what they’ll pay, thus requiring that costs be redistributed onto others, and the cost of operating will greatly reduce.
However, legislatures are already reacting, threatening to pull the licenses of doctors who do not accept insurance.
Well doctors did support Obamacare didn’t they?
I think the opposite is true, and I have seen examples of it in reports in the past. If doctors, labs, pharmacies, etc., operated on a free market prices for most things would be less expensive.
One doctor told me 3/4 of his staff were there to handle insurance. That’s a huge amount of additional overhead!
i'm not talking about "if's" or "free market pricing"... (without going into high deductibles and co-payments in this example)lets say a procedure costs $1000, if the Doc par's with the ins, the procedure cost is negotiated with the ins-co at lets say $650-$700 and you owe nothing
if they do NOT par, and your ins only pays lets say $300-$400, YOU will be billed for the other $600-$700, and even if they do pay(which they won't) $650-$700 you will still be on the hook for the balance simply because they don't par with your ins-co
if 3/4 of his staff is required to do his billing, he should be using a billing house.
#2) As in the proposed Hillarycare legislation of 1996, accepting fee for service would be illegal, subject to felony charges and license revocation.
In the old days, medical expenses were more deductible (you could deduct the amount over 3% of gross income -- now it will be 10%). So people would pay cash, save their bills, add them up at tax time, and that would be that.
If the feds really wanted to simplify things, people would be allowed to pay for routine medical bills with their credit/debit cards, the provider would transmit a code to the card company that this is a deductible medical expense, the card companies would summarize the total and transmit a yearly 1098-type form to the card holder and the IRS, and the individual would just deduct it. BANG, no insurance overhead for the doctor, lower costs to the individual, less paperwork all around.
People could then go back to just needing to have catastrophic hospitalization insurance.
No, the AMA and some academics did. The vast majority of physicians want nothing to do with it.
The moment health care becomes a “human right”, health care workers become slaves.
That would be too simple! Next Doctors would go back to making home visits and accepting payment based on what folks could afford, like eggs or produce. Oh the humanity!
“There’s a hint in the NYT piece that other doctors think it’s irresponsible for their colleagues to stop taking insurance just as the Obamacare rollout promises to strain practices and hospitals past capacity.”
Peer pressure by academic and socialist doctors will somehow convince independent and concierge doctors to do what? Go out of business? Work as a serf at a big hospital corporation? This is a NYT wet dream.
Soft or hard coercion will only accelerate the early retirement of physicians or the exodus of top physicians to offshore clinics, just like the brain drain that occurred in the UK in the 70s as well as with Canadian physicians.
For those that can afford it, concierge medicine is one way to maintain quality, especially for primary care. Some innovative group practices might be able to create hybrid practices that have some providers accepting insurance, with other providers only accepting direct payment. If a patient needs more time, a quicker appointment, or a certain procedure, they could be given the option of direct pay with the opted out/ non-contracted physician.
No, direct pay doctors are actually much cheaper. Insurance inflates costs unbelievably.
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