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Docs Resisting ObamaCare

Grim17

Grim17

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This could end up making medical care for everyone a total nightmare thanks to Obamacare. Think about it... What is going to happen if half the doctors in the US suddenly vanish?


Docs Resisting ObamaCare
by Carl Campanile
October 29, 2013

New York doctors are treating ObamaCare like the plague, a new survey reveals.

A poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society finds that 44 percent of MDs said they are not participating in the nation’s new health-care plan.

Another 33 percent say they’re still not sure whether to become ObamaCare providers.

Only 23 percent of the 409 physicians queried said they’re taking patients who signed up through health exchanges.
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Docs resisting ObamaCare | New York Post
 
The NY Post is a Murdoch rag.
 
Grim17 said:
This could end up making medical care for everyone a total nightmare thanks to Obamacare. Think about it... What is going to happen if half the doctors in the US suddenly vanish?

Docs resisting ObamaCare | New York Post
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Are they moving out of the United States? Changing careers? There's no danger of that . . . they'll accept Obamacare or starve.
 
MaggieD said:
Are they moving out of the United States? Changing careers? There's no danger of that . . . they'll accept Obamacare or starve.
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Anyone who becomes a doctor isn't stupid. I'm sure they took into consideration all factors before making such a decision, factors that I don't have the first clue about.
 
Grim17 said:
Anyone who becomes a doctor isn't stupid. I'm sure they took into consideration all factors before making such a decision, factors that I don't have the first clue about.
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Do you REALLY not understand how STUPID this claim is?
 
Besides any civilized coutnry they might move to already has UHC.
 
Grim17 said:
Tell it to the New York State Medical Society... They are the ones making the claim.
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Obamacare is about insurers, its not about doctors. Doctors don't control who the insurance companies are. Does the self proclaimed media critic get it yet? :lamo
 
MaggieD said:
Are they moving out of the United States? Changing careers? There's no danger of that . . . they'll accept Obamacare or starve.
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Actually, no. When they are forced to provide coverage for less than cost they are more likely to starve participating.

There is a reason why all doctors that accept medicare have a cut off where they stop taking new patients. The reason is that Medicare patients lose them money after the point where their losses make no difference on their tax return. After that point Medicare's abysmal pay out rates start actually eating into their operational budget.

The same will likely be true for these new price fixing plans in the ACA.
 
Grim17 said:
This could end up making medical care for everyone a total nightmare thanks to Obamacare. Think about it... What is going to happen if half the doctors in the US suddenly vanish?

Docs resisting ObamaCare | New York Post
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There is no Obamacare policy. Doctors will accept medicaid or they won't; they will accept BCBS or they won't. If enough of them don't, those who do will be buying even bigger houses and more cars.

The basics of Obamacare is that in order to pay for more medicaid patients, they are subsidizing the middle class with the hope they spend more and create more jobs and more tax revenue to pay for the medicaid expansion. Working class poor people who cannot get coverage through work largely will only be getting the benefit of the contract discounts, not actual insurance coverage in any meaningful way. The working poor will still effectively be uninsured and they will just have fewer digits to deal with in their bankruptcy proceedings.
 
What is a "Obamacare" provider? I thought the exchanges just sold private insurance. There were some limits on cost to make them affordable but a doctor isn't joining a network is he? I've never heard anything about that. Most of this is just doctors saying they aren't going to accept insurance any longer...ok good luck with that bucko. Maybe people will pay you with eggs and milk like the good ol pre insurance days
 
MaggieD said:
Are they moving out of the United States? Changing careers? There's no danger of that . . . they'll accept Obamacare or starve.
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I don't know Maggie. The wife and I see 4 doctors regular, one is retiring at the end of the year and sold his practice already. Another one said he was going to retire and has sold his practice although he is staying on to work there. Two others said they would be moving back to their home countries. If so that just about wiped out all of our normal doctors, eye, heart, lung and family doctor.

The ones who said they will be moving remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure, none of them are/were happy. Around Atlanta there has been quite a lot of practices sold, most to the big medical companies like Emory, Piedmont and the like. Piedmont bought our local county hospital so the big guys seem to like what is going on. Emory bought out our lung and family doctor's practice. What we may be seeing and this is just speculation on my part is the medical practice field becoming much like our now consolidated banking system where 5 huge banks control almost every banking aspect around.

We'll see, it is much too early to tell anything and I firmly believe as to Obamacare it will have to be fully implemented and running for 5 or so years before one can say for sure whether it was a success or failure. Up until then, everything is theory.
 
That is exactly why we have the problem we have today. Doctors and hospitals did not need any more milk and eggs so they came up with a health insurance company and there has been a synergistic upward spiral of profit and greed from the industry ever since. I read the article, it was citing individual doctors saying they were just going to quit taking insurance, but wehn I went to the site I could not find the study so I dont know how it was constructed. CME Cruises | CME in New York | Medical Society of the State of New York I did find one interesting qutoe about the insurncae companies screwing them for years, now the ACA is going to do it. I really thought that was insurance companies too.
iliveonramen said:
What is a "Obamacare" provider? I thought the exchanges just sold private insurance. There were some limits on cost to make them affordable but a doctor isn't joining a network is he? I've never heard anything about that. Most of this is just doctors saying they aren't going to accept insurance any longer...ok good luck with that bucko. Maybe people will pay you with eggs and milk like the good ol pre insurance days
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MaggieD said:
Are they moving out of the United States? Changing careers? There's no danger of that . . . they'll accept Obamacare or starve.
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No, they don't have to. You just see the exodus from primary care increase, and we're at the red line there now.
 
iliveonramen said:
What is a "Obamacare" provider? I thought the exchanges just sold private insurance. There were some limits on cost to make them affordable but a doctor isn't joining a network is he? I've never heard anything about that. Most of this is just doctors saying they aren't going to accept insurance any longer...ok good luck with that bucko. Maybe people will pay you with eggs and milk like the good ol pre insurance days
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Doctors can pick and choose what medical plans they will accept from a given provider. There is nothing obligating them to accept insurance that they feel is not financially advantageous or is overly burdensome. A given doctor may accept a few Aetna PPOs, but not other Aetna plans. In t his case the doctors will simply be opting not to accept health insurance plans from private insurers that are being sold on the exchanges because they know they will be carrying the rest of the ACA regulations and added expense with them.

In the average doctors office it isn't uncommon to see them hire coders and insurance managers that specialize in various insurance plan billing. A doctor that accepts Medicare is almost required to pay an employee just to navigate Medicare billing.

Accepting an ACA derived plan would likely require they hire yet another person to navigate the this new mess foisted on them by the government.... or simply not hire someone and not accept the insurance.
 
iliveonramen said:
What is a "Obamacare" provider? I thought the exchanges just sold private insurance. There were some limits on cost to make them affordable but a doctor isn't joining a network is he? I've never heard anything about that. Most of this is just doctors saying they aren't going to accept insurance any longer...ok good luck with that bucko. Maybe people will pay you with eggs and milk like the good ol pre insurance days
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Somehow this is too concise to be accurate. How many folks are subscribing insurance through the exchange juxtaposed to all who have health insurance? Are doctors not going to 'accept insurance any longer' that is employer based and how many folks is this?
 
I could be wrong but from what I've gleaned from the various contradictory comments/statements/fearmongering/cheerleading etc. is that there are doctors who are resisting taking on any new patients who's healthcare insurance coverage comes out of a government funded program because the government has decided to reduce the amount paid to providers (doctors and clinics) for certain or all services. The issue is, in simple terms, if a doctor can charge and be reimbursed $100 for an office visit from patient A who has private insurance but can only charge and be reimbursed $75 for an office visit from patient B who is covered by Medicaid or Medicare, the doctor may opt to limit his/her acceptance of new patients to those who have private insurance.

This is an issue in any government run/funded/regulated healthcare program - it happens here in Canada. As an example, optometrists lobbied the government a few years back to take annual eye exams out of the healthcare package because the government was only reimbursing them $60 for the visit and they couldn't operate their businesses at that level and wanted to be able to charge more. In Canada, if the government pays for a service, the provider is not allowed to charge an additional or co-pay amount over an above that government amount. As a result, the government delisted eyecare as a covered service and optometrists are now charging whatever the market will bare.

I suspect this is the same type of growing pains being experienced in the US now as the federal government tries to rein in skyrocketting healthcare costs and providers resist that pressure. In Canada, it works because there aren't multiple competing interests - this is doomed to fail in the US unless the government gets out of the business or goes all in.
 
I find it sad, funny and bewildering at the same time the number of people who get into these discussions about health insurance who appear to not have the slightest idea of how insurance works, or how doctors get paid.
 
CanadaJohn said:
...The issue is, in simple terms, if a doctor can charge and be reimbursed $100 for an office visit from patient A who has private insurance but can only charge and be reimbursed $75 for an office visit from patient B who is covered by Medicaid or Medicare, the doctor may opt to limit his/her acceptance of new patients to those who have private insurance.

This is an issue in any government run/funded/regulated healthcare program - it happens here in Canada. As an example, optometrists lobbied the government a few years back to take annual eye exams out of the healthcare package because the government was only reimbursing them $60 for the visit and they couldn't operate their businesses at that level and wanted to be able to charge more. In Canada, if the government pays for a service, the provider is not allowed to charge an additional or co-pay amount over an above that government amount. As a result, the government delisted eyecare as a covered service and optometrists are now charging whatever the market will bare.

I suspect this is the same type of growing pains being experienced in the US now as the federal government tries to rein in skyrocketting healthcare costs and providers resist that pressure. In Canada, it works because there aren't multiple competing interests - this is doomed to fail in the US unless the government gets out of the business or goes all in.
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The actual numbers are $100/private insurance, ~$82/Medicare, ~$47/Medicaid.
Medicare -
http://www.medpac.gov/documents/Mar09_March report testimony_WM FINAL.pdf
pg 3
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07463.pdf
Medicaid -
Medicaid-to-Medicare Fee Index | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
 
Dickieboy said:
The actual numbers are $100/private insurance, ~$82/Medicare, ~$47/Medicaid.
Medicare -
http://www.medpac.gov/documents/Mar09_March report testimony_WM FINAL.pdf
pg 3
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07463.pdf
Medicaid -
Medicaid-to-Medicare Fee Index | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
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There you go - bolsters the point I was trying to make. And it really highlights the problem since the vast majority of new people getting healthcare coverage are those who are lumped into the Medicaid rolls and subsidized by those paying the fine/tax and by the $500 plus billion taken out of Medicare. If 20-30-40 million new patients are on the Medicaid rolls, they may have trouble finding ever scarcer doctors/providers willing to accept half what they could get from other patients with private insurance coverage.
 
Grim17 said:
Anyone who becomes a doctor isn't stupid. I'm sure they took into consideration all factors before making such a decision, factors that I don't have the first clue about.
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I do. If it's really true then it has to be because they think that affordable health care for all the people is going to cut into the higher prices they charge that drives the cost up. After all, Americans pay twice as much per capita for health care compared to Canada.

Taking into consideration that the WHO also says Canada's health care is rated higher.

And taking into consideration that Americans don't care what the WHO says because they must be lying. or something? .......
 
This article is expecting me to believe that doctors are refusing to take patients who have signed up for health insurance from the same companies that were providing it before.

Patient comes in, probably with better insurance than they had before, and doctors don't want them... why? Spite?
 
Lots of weakness to this OP, and the more you read, the weaker it gets.
Deuce said:
This article is expecting me to believe that doctors are refusing to take patients who have signed up for health insurance from the same companies that were providing it before.

Patient comes in, probably with better insurance than they had before, and doctors don't want them... why? Spite?
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