Doctor shortage is soon to get worse
Published 7:27 pm Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Would you take a pay cut, and still keep doing your job? That’s what the federal government is asking physicians to do, and the end result will be a lack of access to care for many seniors and the poor — the people who need that access the most.
“If you thought it was getting increasingly difficult for Medicare and Medicaid patients to see a doctor, you’re right — and that problem may get even worse in 2015,” explains Merrill Matthews in Forbes magazine. “Doctors who still accept Medicare patients could see an average reduction of 21.2 percent in Medicare reimbursement rates, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. And a new Urban Institute study claims primary care physicians who still take Medicaid patients could see an average reduction of 42.8 percent.”
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It’s important to understand how federal policies, including the Affordable Care Act, have made the situation worse.
“Obamacare increased Medicaid reimbursement rates for primary care physicians to Medicare levels — but only for two years, 2013 and 2014,” Matthews writes. “Medicare, which provides health coverage for seniors, pays doctors, on average, about 80 percent of what private health insurance pays. However, Medicaid, which provides health coverage for the poor, pays a much lower rate, about 56 percent.”
The sad reality is that many doctors can no longer afford to accept new Medicare and Medicaid patients.
Democrats needed the support of physicians — and the powerful American Medical Association — to get the Affordable Care Act passed in 2011. That’s why those reimbursement rates were bumped up. The easy fix, and the wrong one, would be to accept President Barack Obama’s offer for a one-year extension of the “bump.”
The reason it’s the wrong solution is that cuts don’t equal reform. See, that’s the mistake the Democrats are making in the first place — and it’s a mistake at the heart of the ACA.
The president and the authors of the ACA talked about “bending the cost curve” of health care. That’s a great goal; Americans do spend a lot of money on health care.
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But the ACA attempts to do this not by reforming the system, with better decisions made by patients and doctors, or market-driven solutions that would empower Americans, but by simply paying doctors less.
In other words, the American health care system has a spending problem. The ACA tries to deal with the problem by simply not paying as many of the bills being racked up. That’s not a real solution.
In the meantime, the looming doctor shortage is real. And cutting doctors’ pay is just going to make matters worse.
“There is nothing new in these types of access problems; countries with socialized medicine experience them frequently,” Matthews writes. “And the U.S. will see even more of them as we move closer to the health care system Obama has acknowledged he really wants — a government-run, single-payer system.”
Congress can and should approve that temporary increase, but only as a stop-gap measure. The nation’s heath care system needs reform, not Band-Aids and bad ideas.
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