The Obama administration wants to dramatically change how doctors are paid

WaPo ^ | 1/26/15 | Jason Millman

[Hugin]

Rather than pay more money to Medicare doctors simply for every procedure they perform, the government will also evaluate whether patients are healthier, among other measures.

Encouraging doctors to dump patients with poor prognoses, and cherry pick those with the best chance for improvement.

[PCPOET7]

the best quality control on a doctor is word of mouth. any system that plays with how a doctor is paid will just get manipulated by the doctors involved and perhaps cause inferior care.

[hosepipe]

Obama wants change how everyone is paid... if at all..
Its called Marxism...

[Mom MD]

and its working.....

[erkelly]

Are oncologists bad doctors because many of their patients die, and plastic surgeons good doctors because the majority of their patients in excellent health? And breaking it down further, should oncological specialists who treat the sickest cancer victims with the deadliest and rarest cancers be paid even less? This is so stupid. When are we going to do something about this? Are we just going to continue voting for the obviously failed republican party?

[Incorrigible]

Can we pay the President based on job performance?

[Soul of the South]

“They are all policy wonks at the EPA, DHS, and HHS with . . .”

Since January 2011 all fully funded by the GOP House of Representatives.

[Gaffer]

I think what Oncologists are going to be forced into is a treatment regimen that is more classical - the cheapest chemotherapy drugs available, at least for the patients whose lives don’t meet the coming ‘government standard’ - taxes and production value.

Radiation, targeted therapies, etc. will probably be reserved only for the “right kind” of people.

There was a doctor here in Atlanta, an Oncologist, who was arrested for giving his patients rat poison as chemo. Seems like the chems weren’t all that much different. He did it because it cost him so much less and he could bill that much more. So. Will the government eventually give approval to D-Con?

[D Rider]

So...If you are really sick, with low chance of successful outcome, good luck finding a doctor.

[P.O.E.]

It’s a fascist thing, you wouldn’t understand.

[Bluebird Singing]

Obama will set a standard impossible to achieve, and voila!, all doctors for the masses will be equal. Social justice.

[The Westerner]

Thank you for posting that from Atlas Shrugged.. I understood thanks to this passage from A.S. that I’d live to see my profession destroyed. Many have known. Doctors in America have been “retiring” early for about 15-20 years. Under dictatorship of any kind, doctors are targeted because they must rely upon clear, independent, clinical judgement to diagnose and treat patients. Independence of thought is not permitted by statists. To them, lives don’t count. Not yours and not mine. Not even their own.

[Bluebird Singing]

Here is a problem with obamacare already! HOSPITALS are penalized for readmissions - so are they turning away patients who might need followup hospitalization, after being discharged from the hospital the first time, so their numbers look good to King obama?

Tyranny.

[Bluebird Singing]

Can I borrow that line? I have been saying something very close to that, but you put it perfectly.

[driftdiver]

So the really sick patients won’t get any care.

[laxcoach]

I suspect that this is step one to paying doctors a set salary. We will have govt paid Medicare doctors, first.

At the heart of it they need to push down the income of the doctors and make it increasingly difficult for them to justify collections. How do you possibly litigate something so subjective as quality of care and outcomes? Every case is different.

So at some point these Medicare doctors will clamor for easier and better pay. Once they are salaried, other problems start.

I personally think this avenue is a tremendous mistake and puts us more quickly onto the track of a more obvious two tier system. Jealousy and calls of unfairness follow that development... Which will lead to nationalization of the entire system and single payer.

Sigh

[ronnie raygun]

The no nothings are going to teach you whether you like it or not. We need a good laxative

[a fool in paradise]

[a fool in paradise]

The Obama administration on Monday announced an ambitious goal to overhaul the way doctors are paid, tying their fees more closely to the quality of care rather than the quantity. Rather than pay more money to Medicare doctors simply for every procedure they perform, the government will also evaluate whether patients are healthier, among other measures. The goal is for half of all Medicare payments to be handled this way by 2018.

Let's try this with academia first. Tie professors' salaries and the tuition to whether the graduates are getting employment, and not just right out of school but down the road when corporate liberals are seeking H1B visas to "do the work that 'muricans won't do".

[a fool in paradise]

Ronald Reagan said it would be like this.

Ronald Reagan speaks out against Socialized Medicine:

“...Now in our country under our free-enterprise system we have seen medicine reach the greatest heights that it has in any country in the world. Today, the relationship between patient and doctor in this country is something to be envied any place. The privacy, the care that is given to a person, the right to chose a doctor, the right to go from one doctor to the other.

But let’s also look from the other side. The freedom the doctor uses. A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms, it’s like telling a lie. One leads to another. First you decide the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government, but then the doctors are equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him he can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

This is a freedom that I wonder if any of us has a right to take from any human being. I know how I’d feel if you my fellow citizens, decided that to be an actor I had to be a government employee and work in a national theater. Take it into your own occupation or that of your husband. All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man’s working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it's a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay and pretty soon your son won’t decide when he’s in school where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do...”