New Medicare Patients Blocked : Doctors Opted Out

The outlook for Medicare looks dim for the next generation if nothing can be done to repeal ObjmaCare - Maybe innovations that are now taking palace to accommodate doctors and patients with 'cash' for service and changes to 'Advantage' programs where the private insurance companies and doctors find common ground outside of ObjmaCare to make Medicare workable and affordable.

One In Five Doctors Say: “No New Medicare Patients”
By John R. Graham

If you learned that 93 percent of non-pediatric primary care physicians took Medicare patients and 94 percent took patients with private insurance, you would likely conclude that Medicare is doing just fine. Unfortunately, such data do not describe physicians’ behavior at the margin, which is what will determine future access to Medicare.

The Kaiser Family Foundation/Commonwealth Fund 2015 National Survey of Primary Care Providers also asks which physicians are not accepting new patients: 21 percent are not taking new Medicare patients and 14 percent are not taking new privately insured patients. That is, the proportion not taking new Medicare patients is 1.5 times greater than the proportion not taking new privately insured patients.

I would encourage the Kaiser Family Foundation and Commonwealth Fund to add a little more detail to the survey, by breaking Medicare down into traditional Fee-For-Service (in which physicians are paid according to a fee schedule dictated by government) or Medicare Advantage (in which they are paid fees negotiated with private insurers), and by breaking “privately insured” into categories (especially patients on Obamacare exchanges).

It would also be interesting to learn whether the physicians who are saying “enough” to new Medicare patients are more likely to be in new payment models (Accountable Care Organizations) which frustrate them. (Another survey reports a wide dispersion of opinions about such reforms among physicians.)

Nevertheless, even this level of detail indicates baby boomers aging in to Medicare will have increasingly difficult access to care. The idea of premium support (whereby Medicare beneficiaries receive subsidies to choose lightly regulated private plans), which NCPA advocates, should become more politically acceptable – if not unavoidable.