RAINDREAM

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Member Since: 2/2010 Last Seen: 11/27/2010

Medicare Doesn't Paid Enough for Services

Seeded on Wed Feb 24, 2010 11:55 AM EST

Article Source: Bloomberg.com

health, health-care, medicare, health-insurance

Seeded by Raindream

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The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little. . . . Nationwide, doctors made about 20 percent less for treating Medicare patients than they did caring for privately insured patients in 2007, a payment gap that has remained stable during the last decade, according to a March report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a panel that advises Congress on Medicare issues. Congress last week postponed for two months a 21.5 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements for doctors.

I think this will get worse under National Coverage or Obamacare, and this quote doesn't speak to the things Medicare never approves.

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Public Discussion (4)

Raindream

I remember a report several months ago about a doctor who set up his own non-profit to receive donations to pay for cornea replacements in new-borns. He said Medicare took about a year to reply to requests for payment and never approved them, but within that time, the child would be permanently blind, so he took matters into his own hands.

I suggest to you that if congress passes a national health coverage, they will eventually start to argue that it should be illegal to refuse to accept that coverage regardless how lousy the payments are. Doctors are just greedy--isn't that the argument already?

1 vote

#1 - Wed Feb 24, 2010 11:59 AM EST

Pacific Northwest Blogger

Some things worth noting:

First, this article references a Mayo Clinic Family Practice spin off in Arizona, not the Mayo clinic in Minnesota that President Obama noted as a model.

Second this is a dated article from Dec 2009, the statistics are out of date as well as the follow up information.

Third from the article,

Robert Berenson, a fellow at the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said physicians’ claims of inadequate reimbursement are overstated. Rather, the program faces a lack of medical providers because not enough new doctors are becoming family doctors, internists and pediatricians who oversee patients’ primary care.

Part of the problem is a lack of primary care, family doctors. Too many Doctors go into specialty fields with the main emphasis of making money...

#2 - Wed Feb 24, 2010 1:43 PM EST

Raindream

They look like branch offices to me. They are still the official Mayo Clinic, even if Mr. Obama praised only the HQ and a Cleveland facility.

I don't understand how a two month old article has data too old to apply. I also don't understand how adding more doctors to the system the adequacy of the reimbursements. They either pay enough or they don't.

Now, I'm not willing to accuse specialists of greed, especially when congress is making the primary charge. Talk about pots calling kettles black.

#3 - Wed Feb 24, 2010 2:28 PM EST

screamingeagle_bct

This reminds me of a report that I read a couple years ago stating that Medicaid payes only 80% of the bill while Medicare only 70% of the bill. That leaves the insurance providers of non Medicaid/Medicare patients to pay for 120% (on average) of the bill to pay for the difference. But of course the insurance companies are just being greedy.

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