The Senate passed the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act. It now goes to the President, and then, it will become law. For all those stuck in the conservative/liberal shorthand of the day, this bill is a great example of why that labeling works AGAINST us all. To see how your Senator voted, got to (http://www.opencongress.org/roll_call/show/4853).
You might be surprised. Now of course what follows is my opinion...This bill is known best for its cowardly caving in to the threats of physicians who promised that they would not take on new Medicare patients without pay protections....So now we give in to physician threats. And the next time they want money? I guess threats will work. In my opinion, it's one of the biggest mistakes we can make and if you don't think so, try to assess your physician experience over the past several years. Threats work because of fear. Baby boomers FEAR that there won't be enough doctors for them under Medicare, ignoring the fact that Medicare is a cash cow for health services providers and expanded government jobs to administer the various laws passed. This bill will impact MOSTLY rural areas and doctor pay. Read the legislation, its "improvements for patients" probably don't include you, even if you are a current Medicare recipient.
Meanwhile, we expect less and less of physicians who whine about the cost of their malpractice insurance (uh, based on the fact of malpractice), who whine about the costs of filling out paperwork eating into their profits (really?, yup), who whine that they are overloaded....yet the last five doctors visits our family had were handled by non-doctor personnel whether it was physician assistant or nurse.
And let's not forget the news report of TWO DAYS ago talking about dead doctors being used by medical suppliers to get Medicare payments...do you really think that doctors have completely clean hands in that scam estimated to have cost over $92 million over the past seven and a half years? Maybe...maybe they don't keep track of their billing and paperwork. Maybe after they die and their practices are sold the next doctors don't pay attention...but if things are that sloppy, how can they complain about time spent doing paperwork? Bottom line is that it doesn't matter. Doctors threaten and people bend over backwards to protect them. Their pay goes up when the country faces unemployment because they THREATEN to stop taking on new customers....are you kidding?
So why are we so confused? Only because we forget our own agenda: Accessible health services that are affordable and that are quality. Now, sometimes our agenda will overlap with the other stakeholders: Doctors and health insurers motivated by profit, the government motivated by gross numbers of "covered" individuals. But in this case, we lose. Government expands to implement "oversight" of additional funds and processes, health insurers expand as they fulfill mandates to provide the Medicare Advantage (read other posts about this little jewel) program to more remote regions, and doctors get their pay protected. How do consumers benefit?
They don't unless they believe they just saved themselves from a doctor shortage as these greedy individuals threaten to refuse to take on the elderly because they're not getting paid enough. We have many doctors in this country, we have many more per person than other countries, let them opt out, others will opt in, giving into threats is a loser game and we lost.
