Monday, August 20, 2012

Obama's Cuts Will Drive Doctors Out Of Medicate

Team Obama insists that Obama's $716 billion raid on Medicare is just accounting. But that's not how care providers see it.
“I love taking care of Medicare patients,” Wertsch told the Capital Times, a progressive paper in Madison. “But every time we treat them we have to dig into our wallets. What kind of business model is that?” Today, Medicare patients represent one-quarter of Wildwood’s practice overall, and as much as 70 percent for some of the clinic’s veterans, like Wertsch. In 2011, Wildwood decided to stop accepting new patients from the Medicare program.

Wildwood was the first clinic in the Madison area to stop taking new Medicare patients. But, nationally, doctors like Wertsch are increasingly common.

‘Well, honey, it’s just going to get worse’

Joseph Shanahan is a rheumatologist in Raleigh, North Carolina. Shanahan told his local ABC affiliate, WTVD, that he was one of the few rheumatologists left in the Research Triangle area who accepted Medicare patients. “The reimbursement is so low [with Medicare]—in some cases 60, 80 dollars—it costs you more to get a plumber to come to your house than to get a rheumatologist to come to the hospital,” he said.

This spring, Shanahan decided to stop taking new Medicare patients. “Not by choice,” said Shanahan, “but I’ve got to pay off the business loan I got, and I got to pay my staff, and I got to pay my malpractice insurance.” Shanahan reiterated what you hear from a lot of doctors: that they don’t want to stop taking new patients, but the government has left them no choice. “I don’t do medicine for the money,” he explained. “I never got into it to get rich. The real reward in medicine is taking care of patients and making them feel better.”

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