Medicare Cuts
I just read an article discussing the new 10.6% cuts in Medicare reimbursement for physicians and I was appalled. There was a bill in place to suspend the cuts, but since Congress went on vacation for the 4th of July it was shelved until after. Unfortunately the cuts were set to be activated on July 1st! The article went on to detail how cuts in reimbursement will make caring for Medicare patients financial suicide for many private practice clinics. Uh....duh. It's already a charity to see Medicare patients who traditionally bring in pennies more than they cost!
What is our government thinking? Why do they attack the 7% of Medicare costs (physician reimbursements) instead of the 93% (overhead, administration, hospitals, technology, pharmaceuticals, etc)? Why has our government been painting the picture of money grubbing doctors as the source of our surge in healthcare costs when it's the unbridled use technology in the name of "standard of care" and hospital protocols or the intentionally bloated hospital bills to cover those who won't pay? In a time when the country faces an alarming shortage of physicians, wouldn't it make sense to support them, encourage the development of more, and NOT turn them into villains?
Medicare cuts and the seeming inevitability of universal (AKA socialized) medicine are making medical school a terribly irresponsible investment. Why would anyone invest 100's of thousands of dollars and 7 - 10 yrs of their life to be yanked around by the government and make less than their friends who got a general business degree? To help people (understand it's possible to help people in any line of work)? They can't when our government makes caring for the most needy (those on medicare/medicaid) financially impossible!! Who's going to go to medical school in 5 yrs at this rate? The best and brightest? Absolutely not! They'd be stupid to give up their autonomy and creative freedom for a future of robotic compliance, hurried office visits, and fear of litigation. But we need to ramp up the graduation of new physicians by thousands per year to replace the rapid retirement of baby boomer doctors, so who's going to do it? I'm not sure, but I don't look forward to finding out... Put it this way; with the demand for nurses being so high, has anyone noticed the quality of nursing care improving? No, I haven't either.
The future does NOT look good for Americans truly in need of health care unless something drastic happens. Either we quadruple our taxes to pay for the way we do it now, or we stop regulating the art out of medicine and allow doctors to practice what many people hate to admit is an imperfect science.
What is our government thinking? Why do they attack the 7% of Medicare costs (physician reimbursements) instead of the 93% (overhead, administration, hospitals, technology, pharmaceuticals, etc)? Why has our government been painting the picture of money grubbing doctors as the source of our surge in healthcare costs when it's the unbridled use technology in the name of "standard of care" and hospital protocols or the intentionally bloated hospital bills to cover those who won't pay? In a time when the country faces an alarming shortage of physicians, wouldn't it make sense to support them, encourage the development of more, and NOT turn them into villains?
Medicare cuts and the seeming inevitability of universal (AKA socialized) medicine are making medical school a terribly irresponsible investment. Why would anyone invest 100's of thousands of dollars and 7 - 10 yrs of their life to be yanked around by the government and make less than their friends who got a general business degree? To help people (understand it's possible to help people in any line of work)? They can't when our government makes caring for the most needy (those on medicare/medicaid) financially impossible!! Who's going to go to medical school in 5 yrs at this rate? The best and brightest? Absolutely not! They'd be stupid to give up their autonomy and creative freedom for a future of robotic compliance, hurried office visits, and fear of litigation. But we need to ramp up the graduation of new physicians by thousands per year to replace the rapid retirement of baby boomer doctors, so who's going to do it? I'm not sure, but I don't look forward to finding out... Put it this way; with the demand for nurses being so high, has anyone noticed the quality of nursing care improving? No, I haven't either.
The future does NOT look good for Americans truly in need of health care unless something drastic happens. Either we quadruple our taxes to pay for the way we do it now, or we stop regulating the art out of medicine and allow doctors to practice what many people hate to admit is an imperfect science.
posted by Toby Rockefeller at 6:28 AM
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