Posted on 11/19/2010 9:37:24 AM PST by Nachum
WASHINGTON – Breast cancer surgeon Kathryn Wagner has posted a warning in her waiting room about a different sort of risk to patients' health: She'll stop taking new Medicare cases if Congress allows looming cuts in doctors' pay to go through.
The scheduled cuts — the result of a failed system set up years ago to control costs — have raised alarms that real damage to Medicare could result if the lame-duck Congress winds up in a partisan standoff and fails to act by Dec. 1. That's when an initial 23 percent reduction would hit.
Neither Democrats nor newly empowered Republicans want the sudden cuts, but there's no consensus on how to stave them off. The debate over high deficits complicates matters, since every penny going to make doctors whole will probably have to come from cuts elsewhere. A reprieve of a few months may be the likeliest outcome. That may not reassure doctors.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
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If doctors aren’t going to be paid what they are worth, they will simply stop accepting Medicare patients.
Doing a schadenfreude dance. The reason this cut in reinbursements rates is law was to make ObamaCare appear to cut the deficit. The AMA supported ObamaCare with the cynical assumption the cuts in reimbursement rates that once again was used to sell ObamaCare to the public would be reversed. If I Boehner I would refuse to repeal the rate cut as a condition for the repeal of ObamaCare.
We need some markers. What are doctors making these days?
I don’t know, but my uncle is a urologist in Florida and he has made less money each year for the past 10 years from Medicare. That means that 11 years ago he made more than what he’s making today. Medicare might cover the cost of the procedure, but he still has to keep up his license, take classes, maintain an office, compensate his staff, etc.
I have a group of docs insured that work for a hospital.
$350-450k take home pay + they recieve $50-70K above that into each of their pension plans. Plus full benefits. Full disbaility, Long term care insurance, dental vision, health club memerbship paid, meals paid at the hospital while working etc..
On another site a guy's dad who is a doc works with mostly medicare patients and takes home $750-800 K but he has 3-4 docs that work with him.
I'm sure the docs who are rural etc make less.
And don’t forget malpractice insurance! One of his former partners is being sued for malpractice and my uncle, according to malpractice laws, is liable for a percentage of what his former partner can be sued for. Even though he did not even see, consult, or touch the patient who is suing.
...called the “doc fix”, crap from the get go. When the dems cut 500,000,000 from medicare without a whimper from the “people”, we got Obama care. Frankly Scarlett, everyone who voted for it, should be hanged by the neck for willful violation of oath of office, but noooooo, they will fight the Republicans to the end, to avoid repeal.
Enough that they can offer me a 25% discount if I pay when service is rendered, which I always do.
Medicare is not actually being cut. That $500b is just a cut in growth and doc's are going to be reimbursed less. No benefits are going to be eliminated. Medicare is still going to be growing every year.
I don't have a answer but cuts need to be made or it is going to go bankrupt or our kids are going to be paying 80% of their pay just to keep SS & Medicare going.
A few days ago on FR one popular prostrate treatment is $100k. That is insane.
When I mean cuts I don't want dealth panels but people in the medical community are going to have to tighten their belts just like the rest of America.
A family friend makes $180k per year as a drug sales rep. and we wonder why r/X cost is going up 20% per year.
Cost needs to be contained or the whole system will just collapse in a few years.
Possible?
If doctors aren’t going to be paid what they are worth...”
My daddy who was born in 1898 didn’t ever say much but when he did I learned to listen. I complained about my pay on my first job - $.56 an hour - saying I was worth more. His response: You are worth what someone will pay you. I would pay my orthopod whatever he charges me within reason because I value his expertise. My neighbor who went to him once upon my recommendation said she doesn’t think he’s worth a plugged nickle. But then we have added the government into the mix who thinks they can best decide what a service or person is worth based on the whole, not the parts. No win situation for anyone.
Are you sure you are not overpaying?? Why not allow it go through the insurance discount via the contractual agreement?
I see EOB's everyday. Just had one for a x-ray in a urgent care. They billed $76 and the insurance company allowed $28via the contractual agreement with the doctor so that was all what the member had to pay.
Its not a matter of being paid what we are worth. We are already losing money on medicare patients, but other insurances pay enough to keep it financially OK to see a reasonable number of medicare patients. If the cuts go through, the financial losses incurred with seeing medicare patients will no longer make it viable to continue caring for medicare patients. It literally costs more in overhead to see a medicare patient now than medicare reimburses. If the 23% cut goes through, the system is finished.
Enjoy your schadenfreude until you need a physician. The AMA is a leftist lobbying organization that does not speak for the vast majority of physicians in the US. What is going to happen is most of us will retire. You will have your outsourced physician that was not trained in this country. Hope that is worth the pleasure you are getting at seeing physicians on the chopping block.
Most far less than required to be in the upper tax bracket, if that helps.
Let me know where this is. I have a hospital practice, and with being short staffed and working 20 14-16 hour shifts a month and nights as well as holidays, I will make less that 200K this year.
In relative terms I make about 30% of what I made in 1991, and that is NOT adjusting for inflation, and based on identical workloads.
I dropped my AMA membership when they endorsed Obamacare.
I also think the pay cuts, and we’re talking 25% or so, are inevitable. Low hanging fruit for the budget hawks.
It will drive some or many docs out of work, especially ones who see a lot of elderly.
Those of us in E. Tenn.
make ~ 30% below national averages
The Medicare cuts are eventually lethal to
Rural M.D.s with a large proportion of Medicaid/Medicare patients
our immediate area is 20-30% Medicaid eligible...
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