Posted on 01/03/2010 12:34:13 PM PST by La Lydia
Phoenix - The Mayo Clinic in Arizona, as of tomorrow, will no longer accept patients who are on Medicare. Medicare patients are no longer going to be accepted due to the fact that the compensation paid out by Medicare is apparently not adequate to make up for the cost of care taken on by the clinic.
What this means is that many patients on Medicare are either going to have to begin to pay in cash, or be turned away to go elsewhere outside of the Mayo Clinic.
The Mayo Clinic has roughly 3,000 patients on Medicare who see their doctors in Arizona. As of tomorrow though, they will either have to pay in cash for their doctor visits, or go somewhere else.
This is only for the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, as this does not impact their other locations in Florida and Minnesota.
A lot of this has to do with the fact that doctors make far less treating Medicare patients than they do treating patients on private health insurance plans.
Change you can believe in......
Medicaire and soon Obamacare is paying so little that institutions are losing too much to cover up with other profits as was past practice.
We saw this coming a mile away. Barry, Reid and Baucus have cut-off the nation’s elderly at the knees.
I have a feeling they are going to walk on what left of their legs straight to Lowe’s to stock up on pitchforks and torches. And they will take it out on the weasels in Congress. There is already an army of 3,000 ready to arise in Phoenix. The Phoenix-area congressmen who voted for the health care bill that cut the Medicare payments are going to be in for a fun year.
When this idiot gets his way, we will be running to to Canadian border to get better health care.
Talk about death panels.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Karl Marx.
No, they are all socialized up, too. Go south. There are many places in Mexico where you can get first rate medical care.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Karl Marx.
You are presuming Obamao had good intentions.
I must disagree.
Lesser of two evils soon, sadly enough.
I went on Medicare last March and have a Medigap supplimental insurance with United Health Care. I’ve been to two drs here in DFW and have had no problems with them taking Medi with the supplimental.
I have wondered why there isn’t more of this from the medical community. If enough of them organized and took similar action you can bet there would be an uproar.
Harvard Medical School announced that the health care plan will NOT address the problems in our health care system.
Is it actually illegal for a Medicare patient to pay for their own care?
So it is becoming more transparent that Obama's Health Care Reform is designed to thin out the old herd?
Too bad for Arizona tho. Seniors used to spend tons of money there.
sw
We had a doctor's townhall here this summer, and this subject came up. I am not familiar with the actual law covering such a situation. But the doctors testified that any patient on medicare MUST be billed to medicare. The patient is not allowed to cover the entire cost themselves, even should they wish to and have the cash in their hand. All patients 65 and over are on medicare, whether they wish it or not.
A relative received treatment for cancer 2yrs ago at Mayo Scottsdale. He had to pay up front and received the reimbursement from Medicare. This seems to be a new practice with primary care physicians. Mayo Rochester stopped taking medicaid patients from 2 states about 6 months ago because the reimbursement did not come near covering the cost from the treatments received. I think what we are seeing here is national news agencies trying to make Mayo out to be bad. I don’t agree with that. One only has to look at the number of dentists who do not take new medicaid patients, the number of physicians who have limited their new patients and what type of insurance they will take. etc etc, it is NOT just the Mayo Clinic.
I do see the eventuality of many physicians near retirement age with years of experience that they should pass on retiring rather then working for peanuts.
If you had the responsibility for life and death decisions would you want a guberment official telling you how to do a job you’ve done for years?
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