Replies

...skyrocketing premiums, everyone at the mercy of the insurance industry as recently seen with the 39% premium increases proposed by Anthem Blue Cross in California...this kind of demagoguery is infuriating - government health programs - Medicare and Medicaid - routinely underpay providers for the actual cost of care by at least 10 percent - providers have to make up the difference somehow or they go bankrupt - so they usually shift the cost to private payers, including the insurance companies, who then are vilified by the likes of Obama and the 'rats for their rapidly rising premiums - everyone is at the mercy of the government's interference into the health care field, and it's only going to get worse......

Glad to see you understand the problem so well.

Doctors and clinics are so poorly reimbursed by the US Govt for Medicare that they end up coding higher for privately insured patients.

Once a doctor has a medicare patient in their panel, and that could be from a longtime patent turning 65, that doctor is pretty much forced to see that patient. They are not allowed by law to refuse to see their Medicare patients. When their patient panel gets too packed with elderly Medicare patients, they lose money, go out of business or shut down and start over with a new patient panel but refusing new Medicare patients.

As a doctor, you can refuse to see new Medicare patients, but must see those already in your practice. But if you are a doctor that repeatedly sees the same patients, then there’s nothing to be done if a longtime patient has their 65th birthday and comes in to see you. You are going to eat the cost and think of ways to shift it to those with private insurance.

So yes, premiums go up because of government dictating care for the elderly and paying whatever they feel like paying on a month to month basis. And that more often than not means the doctor is working for about $9 per hour or losing money.