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Texas Doctors Opting Out Of Medicare At Alarming Rate

The Prof

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Texas doctors fleeing Medicare in droves | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Texas doctors are opting out of Medicare at alarming rates, frustrated by reimbursement cuts they say make participation in government-funded care of seniors unaffordable.

Two years after a survey found nearly half of Texas doctors weren't taking some new Medicare patients, new data shows 100 to 200 a year are now ending all involvement with the program. Before 2007, the number of doctors opting out averaged less than a handful a year.

“This new data shows the Medicare system is beginning to implode,” said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the Texas Medical Association. “If Congress doesn't fix Medicare soon, there'll be more and more doctors dropping out and Congress' promise to provide medical care to seniors will be broken.”

More than 300 doctors have dropped the program in the last two years, including 50 in the first three months of 2010, according to data compiled by the Houston Chronicle. Texas Medical Association officials, who conducted the 2008 survey, said the numbers far exceeded their assumptions.

The largest number of doctors opting out comes from primary care, a field already short of practitioners nationally and especially in Texas. Psychiatrists also make up a large share of the pie, causing one Texas leader to say, “God forbid that a senior has dementia.”

The opt-outs follow years of declining Medicare reimbursement that culminated in a looming 21 percent cut in 2010. Congress has voted three times to postpone the cut, which was originally to take effect Jan. 1. It is now set to take effect June 1.
 
Some comments:

1. No surprise.

2. You KNEW what was in the bill.

3. They CRAMMED it anyway.

4. They almost had to DEEM it.

5. You can't expand Medicare and Medicaid, already overstrained, already overly relied upon, by some 12 million miserable Americans while simultaneously cutting its fatally insufficient funding by HALF A TRIL.

6. As PHYSICALLY unavoidable as gravity.

7. His resort to rooting out WASTE, FRAUD and ABUSE to underwrite all this is INSULTING.

8. Why couldn't Saint Teddy of Chappaquiddick find all those hundreds of bil's in all those decades of leonine laboring.

9. Just like Canada, we're gonna have to assemble our own WAIT TIMES ALLIANCES.

10. Just like our Maple Leafy friends above the 49th, we're gonna get our very own DOC SHORTAGE.

11. And his reconstituted rationalizations underlying all this, that passage of Obamacare would rescue our ER's from submersion, are similarly rebuffed.

Health reform threatens to cram already overwhelmed emergency rooms - TheHill.com

12. Romney-care in Massachusetts provides the EMPIRICS pertaining to emergency rooms' increased traffic.

13. CBO said last week Obamacare would cost an extra 120B, putting the total tab over a TRIL.

14. All the DEFICIT REDUCTIONS dreamed about disappear.

15. AT&T and the other megacorps last month had to book an extra BILLION dollars EACH just to pay for the extra costs incurred.

16. All too predictable, you KNEW what was in this bill.

The Prof
 
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It seems like we're going from insurance you can't afford to insurance you can't use.
 
Next on Obama's radar: Changing the doctor's oath to force them to accept Medicare.
 
I think you need to scrap your two party system and start holding your politicians accountable, because voting in one side of stealing bastards over another side of stealing bastards is not getting you anywhere, please view exhibit A

Life_expectancy_vs_spending_OECD.png


Your country spends more then any other country in the world on Health Care per capita, yet you yield far inferior results then most other developed countries that spend LESS then you do... why is this? You gotta cut out the waste, and the only way to do that is to reform your entire political system so that one party or the other doesn't have a stranglehold on the money at one time and can be held accountable. WASTE and incompetence of both political parties is the problem.
 
I think you need to scrap your two party system and start holding your politicians accountable, because voting in one side of stealing bastards over another side of stealing bastards is not getting you anywhere, please view exhibit A

Life_expectancy_vs_spending_OECD.png


Your country spends more then any other country in the world on Health Care per capita, yet you yield far inferior results then most other developed countries that spend LESS then you do... why is this? You gotta cut out the waste, and the only way to do that is to reform your entire political system so that one party or the other doesn't have a stranglehold on the money at one time and can be held accountable. WASTE and incompetence of both political parties is the problem.


1. Medicare

2. Outrageous malpractice insurance premiums.

3. Fast food
 
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1. Medicare

2. Outrageous malpractice insurance premiums.

3. Fast food

Very good points, problem is Medicare wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't so damned inefficient, which is where cutting the waste comes on.

Well the Malpractice premiums is just a case of a sue happy culture, some people who had legitimate greviences and some who sue for the hell of it, ruining the party for everyone :(

and the final point, indeed, but once again you have the freedom to eat it or not, same as being sue happy, so unless you legislate and ban people from Sueing or eating Maccy D's, start by fixing your wasteful spending politicians.
 
1. Medicare

2. Outrageous malpractice insurance premiums.

3. Fast food

Let me add.............

Wonder drugs.

Ever wonder where those drugs come from, and how much they cost to bring to market? When was the last time you heard of a new cancer treatment drug that came out of Canada or England?
 
I think you need to scrap your two party system and start holding your politicians accountable, because voting in one side of stealing bastards over another side of stealing bastards is not getting you anywhere, please view exhibit A

Life_expectancy_vs_spending_OECD.png


Your country spends more then any other country in the world on Health Care per capita, yet you yield far inferior results then most other developed countries that spend LESS then you do... why is this? You gotta cut out the waste, and the only way to do that is to reform your entire political system so that one party or the other doesn't have a stranglehold on the money at one time and can be held accountable. WASTE and incompetence of both political parties is the problem.

What is the death toll for your oh so great system?

The average wait time for a Canadian awaiting surgery or other medical treatment is now 18.3 weeks, a new high, according to a report released Monday.

That's an increase of 97 per cent over 14 years, the report says.

"Canadians wait longer than Americans, Germans, and Swedes for cardiac care, although not as long as New Zealanders or the British," it reads. "Economists attempting to quantify the cost of this waiting time have estimated it to amount to $1,100 to $5,600 annually per patient."

Read more: CBC News - Health - Wait times for surgery, medical treatments at all-time high: report

Urgent patients never registered on a wait list with a clearance time of more than 1 month. Semi-urgent patients registered on shorter wait lists more often than non-urgent patients (79.1% vs. 44.7%). In semi-urgent and non-urgent patients, the observed proportion of wait-list deaths by 52 weeks was lower in category "1 month or less" than in category "more than 1 month" (0.8% [49 deaths] vs. 1.6% [39 deaths], P < 0.005). After adjustment, the odds of death before surgery were 64% higher in patients on longer lists, odds ratio [OR] = 1.64 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.02–2.63). The observed death rate was higher in category "more than 1 month" than in category "1 month or less", 0.79 (95%CI 0.54–1.04) vs. 0.58 (95% CI 0.42–0.74) per 1000 patient-weeks, the adjusted OR = 1.60 (95%CI 1.01–2.53). Longer wait times (log-rank test = 266.4, P < 0.001) and higher death rates contributed to a higher cumulative incidence for death on the wait list with a clearance time of more than 1 month.

Cumulative incidence for wait-list death in relation to length of queue for coronary-artery bypass grafting: a cohort study


Maybe this is how you guys are going to solve your escalating health care costs....... kill more with longer and longer wait times.
 
Your country spends more then any other country in the world on Health Care per capita, yet you yield far inferior results then most other developed countries that spend LESS then you do... why is this?
Here's the quick answer to your question:

fat-people-1.jpg
 
1. Medicare

2. Outrageous malpractice insurance premiums.

3. Fast food


4. Motor Vehicle accidents

5. homicides

6. differences in how live births are counted
 
What is the death toll for your oh so great system?

We're not talking about my system are we? So why don't you actually talk about your system, which is the topic at hand, oh and btw our mortality rate is lower then yours. Not by much but it is.

So thank you for not finding a way to debunk what I was saying... which... wait a second shouldn't you agree with it!?!?! I mean I'm talking about wasteful spending, thought that was your conservatives forte? or am I just dreaming :mrgreen:
 
I think you need to scrap your two party system and start holding your politicians accountable, because voting in one side of stealing bastards over another side of stealing bastards is not getting you anywhere, please view exhibit A

Life_expectancy_vs_spending_OECD.png


Your country spends more then any other country in the world on Health Care per capita, yet you yield far inferior results then most other developed countries that spend LESS then you do... why is this? You gotta cut out the waste, and the only way to do that is to reform your entire political system so that one party or the other doesn't have a stranglehold on the money at one time and can be held accountable. WASTE and incompetence of both political parties is the problem.

Again with this?

No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/opinion/10pollan.html?_r=1

le2.jpg


n a previous CD post, I cited a study from researchers at the University of Iowa that compares unadjusted life expectancy means in OECD countries from 1980-1999 to standardized life expectancy means, which account for the effects of premature death resulting from a non-health-related fatal injury. As the chart above shows (click to enlarge), the U.S. has the highest standardized life expectancy among the OECD countries (76.9 years), and 0.70 years higher than in Canada (76.2 years).

CARPE DIEM: Beyond Those Health Care Numbers: US Looks Good


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/business/04view.html

Life expectancy at birth is absolutely useless for measuring health care quality.
 
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Life expectancy at birth is absolutely useless for measuring health care quality.

Maybe because they never get health care over a lifetime from childhood to adulthood? After all they are dead at birth or soon afterwords.
 
Advocates of an individual mandate say that a requirement to buy insurance is essential because everyone is currently paying a "hidden tax" when people show up in the emergency room without insurance. (Under existing law, emergency rooms are required to treat urgent care matters without regard to ability to pay. If the patient cannot afford the bill, those costs are then passed to the government or people who have insurance in the form of higher prices).

Buy Insurance or Go to Jail? - The Note

Massachusetts in 2006 created near-universal coverage for residents, which was supposed to ease the traffic in hospital emergency rooms.

But a recent poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians found that nearly two-thirds of the state’s residents say emergency department wait times have either increased or remained the same.

A February 2010 report by The Council of State Governments found that wait times had not abated since the law took effect.

Health reform threatens to cram already overwhelmed emergency rooms - TheHill.com

a little more (again, the results are in, there's not much room for argument):

ER visits, costs in Mass. climb - The Boston Globe

Emergency room wait times getting longer - White Coat Notes - Boston.com

"Just because you have insurance doesn't mean there's a [primary care] physician who can see you," said Dr. Sandra Schneider, vice president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which, like other national groups, is closely watching the Massachusetts experiment. "I am not surprised at all that visits went up."

you KNEW what was in this bill
 
barbara hickey of south carolina has cerebral palsey, confined to her wheelchair, suddenly denied by OBAMACARE of 44% of her home-health help

brian phillips also suffers cp, he can operate his tv's remote control but that's about all he can do, he lives alone with his 70 year old father james who's had open heart surgery and whose valves only operate at 26%---the phillips have seen HALF their personal care assistance stripped

chip eubanks likes to ride around in his motorized wheelchair which he steers with his mouth, his greatest fear is institutionalization, which appears inevitable now

his diabetic mother had an aneurism, is mostly blind and wheelchair bound

the tragic irony is this idiot OBAMACARE is actually gonna cost a lot MORE after chip is forced into a nursing home

obamacare is RESPONSIBLE, obamacare is HEARTLESS

you KNEW what was in this bill
 
barbara hickey of south carolina has cerebral palsey, confined to her wheelchair, suddenly denied by OBAMACARE of 44% of her home-health help

brian phillips also suffers cp, he can operate his tv's remote control but that's about all he can do, he lives alone with his 70 year old father james who's had open heart surgery and whose valves only operate at 26%---the phillips have seen HALF their personal care assistance stripped

chip eubanks likes to ride around in his motorized wheelchair which he steers with his mouth, his greatest fear is institutionalization, which appears inevitable now

his diabetic mother had an aneurism, is mostly blind and wheelchair bound

the tragic irony is this idiot OBAMACARE is actually gonna cost a lot MORE after chip is forced into a nursing home

obamacare is RESPONSIBLE, obamacare is HEARTLESS

you KNEW what was in this bill

Does this even have anything to do with health care reform?
 
oh, brother

read the link

do it for barbara, brian and chip

and their poor, put out families
 
1. Medicare

2. Outrageous malpractice insurance premiums.

3. Fast food

To that I would add unreasonable expectations by patients and families especially near end of life. "Do whatever you can for my 95 year old mom doc!" Can't tell you how often I hear that one or something similar.
 

They should start renaming this stuff to accurately portray what is going on.

This is from now on known as Bernie Madoff-Care.
Except this shell game makes Madoff's look tame.

Isn't Gov'ment wonderful to deal with?
So efficient.
So effective.
And when it tanks guess what suckers are left holding the bag after the morons that started this Ponzi Scheme have long croaked?

.
 
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