Written by: Scott Tomiko
Medicare enrolled patients are being seen by less and less Doctors. Many doctors are not accepting new Medicare
patients. Some attribute this to payment
rates not keeping up to the inflation rate and soon reimbursements could be cut
by 25%. An example of payments that doctors
receive from Medicare is $68 for a 15 –minute visit. This requires doctors to
see at least 30 patients a day to make their bills. Many doctors equate this to assembly line
line medicine rather then being able to actually talk to and help the patient.
Patient privacy is another issue many doctors are concerned with. Patient records are available to all doctors
who see a particular patient. This means
all confident information between a patient and a specific doctor is available
to all doctors that the patient visits.
Doctors have 3 different choices when dealing with Medicare. 1st they can be a part of the
system billing Medicare directly. 2nd non-participating doctors can
file Medicare reimbursements and then they can charge an additional 10% for
some services. 3rd doctors can opt out of Medicare, which means they
cannot see patients who still participate in the Medicare system.
• How does the level of government control, between a perfect market
system and a central planning system, affect the industry or market in the
article? A perfect market system lets individuals and private firms make the
major decisions about production and consumption, while a central planning
system has the government making most of the important economic decisions. Medicare is a central planed system, the
government controls all major decisions of what is covered with patients
medical care, and what doctors are allowed to charge for everything they do for
the Medicare patient. Patents are not
able to choose what procedures are done and doctors are only able to do
producers on patients that the government approves of and then they can only
charge certain fees for each service. Medicare is the exact opposite of a free
market system. The government has added
new mandates to the system, which will reduce the amount to money doctors, get
paid.
• How might the industry or market change if the level of government
control moved one way or another along the continuum? Since
the government controls all aspects of Medicare, the government would have to
loosen its controls on the Medicare system. Republicans would like to see
Medicare patients to be able to see private doctors; Democrats feel this will
undermine the entire system. The government is too involved in the health care
system. Anyone with a job has paid into
the Medicare system. Allow each person
the choice to go where they want. Each person should have an account that shows
how much he or she has paid into the system and how much benefits that are
allowed each year. This would then allow
them to go shopping for a doctor or service.
If I go shopping for food with $100, I can by many items or just one
item but I have to stop at $100.
I think the system is so big and so
many people have come to depend on it that no one will want to change it toward
a free market system. Politicians will
do what they can to keep Medicare in place.
The U.S. has become a welfare country.
“The two (Medicare and Social
Security)’programs accounted for 37 percent of all federal spending last year,
and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, under current law, their
share will grow to 42 percent by 2023”. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/us/politics/outlook-for-medicare.html?_r=0
As a society how can we continue to
support programs that cannot pay for themselves? Both of these programs are specifically taxed
out of each person’s paycheck, yet the government cannot figure out how to make
them self-supporting.
More Doctors Steer Clear of Medicare – July 20, 2013 Wall Street Journal
