Posted by Tina
The Washington Examiner reports that independent insurance brokers in California are estimating that 70% of the state’s doctors will not participate in the California exchange under Obamacare. Here’s why:
California offers one of the lowest government reimbursement rates in the country — 30 percent lower than federal Medicare payments. And reimbursement rates for some procedures are even lower.
In other states, Medicare pays doctors $76 for return-office visits. But in California, Medi-Cal’s reimbursement is $24, according to Dr. Theodore M. Mazer, a San Diego ear, nose and throat doctor.
In other states, doctors receive between $500 to $700 to perform a tonsillectomy. In California, they get $160, Mazer added.
Only in September did insurance companies disclose that their rates would be pegged to California’s Medicaid plan, called Medi-Cal. That’s driven many doctors to just say no.
The article continues and is well worth reading.
And Jack, doctors might be a good group to target with information about the state of Jefferson. I’m sure if Obamacare survives we can do better than California putting together an exchange. (barf)
Another headline just caught my attention on Drudge: Obamacare Plans Exclude Top Hospitals.
These hospitals will be reserved for the elite few!
It’s just more evidence that we will get what we predicted from Obamacare…shared misery in an inferior system at great expense.
California Republicans want to help people make the best possible choices. American Thinker reports that they have developed a website that explains options, tax ramifications, and consequences that may not be spelled out in the legislation.
Predictably leftist media have attempted to paint the Republican site a a fraudulent site to steer people away from it:
ABC News: California Republicans Defend Fake Obamacare Site
HuffPo: Californiia Republicans Direct Constituents to Misleading Obamacare ‘Resource Guide’
thinkprogress.org: The Fake ObamacareSite That is Trying to Trick Californians
Yahoo ‘News’: My personal favorite. Notice “resource,” which it indisputably is, is in quotes but “fake,” which it clearly is not, is not. California Republicans Send Voters to a Fake Obamacare ‘Resource’ Site
Business Insider: Republicans Trick Californians with Fake Healthcare Site
Daily Kos: California GOP Creates Fake Healthcare Website to Discourage Constituents from Obtaining Insurance
The Republican website is worth checking out; just go to Covering Healthcare: A California Resource Guide and look around.
Good luck, by the way, cause this is going to hurt an awful lot of us.
CA, NY & MD are all supposed to be the shining lights of success with Obumblecare.
MD’s is a mess with Taxifornia not far behind. Haven’t heard anything yet about NY, but it’s obvious that those “shining lights'” batteries have gone dead.
Tina you are right. A single payer system like Medicare is much better. I’m sure you’ll support expanding Medicare to cover everyone.
But it would be nice if the Washington Times told it like it actually is. The doctors are crabbing about the Medi-Cal reimbursement rate, not the ACA. The have always crabbed about that. It is quite low.
And the state (of California) is, to a degree, being nefarious. Up to now, that vast majority of a doctor’s practice was insured. They were supposed to be altruistic and take the hit, Medi-Cal-wise. (Very few of them do.)
Now, thanks to the ACA, the Medi-Cal pool is going to be much bigger, and they will take a bigger hit … if they take Medi-Cal patients at all, which a lot of them … don’t.
Is there a doctor in Butte County running a Medi-Cal practice?
Sorry but this might hurt. That is a RW propaganda blog
Quite frankly the doctors many of them foreign that have been ripping off the insurance companies need to take a hike. My doctor milked MY premium PPO for $500,000.oo of un-necessary tests. Drove up premiums for a whole company. In fact i think I will sue that doctor. Calling a Lawyer today. Put my health in jeopardy sending me to every high priced specialist for everything but the actual solution!
The ACA will have some stuff to iron out but the Tea Party that thinks health care should only be for the 1%. Think that a CEO should make millions and the employees should make $2 or 3 dollars an hour per eric cantor, Think that unlimited money in the elections is good because China now participates, are on the wrong side of history
Bottom Line The tea party wants to destroy America for Fascism and corporate rule are going to need de programming after the koch’s are done with them.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-02/koch-brothers-flout-law-getting-richer-with-secret-iran-sales.html
P.S. When ya shop for Christmas turn over the box and look at which country you are supporting
http://www.healthycal.org/archives/13681
http://www.calhospital.org/cha-news-article/aca-further-boost-payments-primary-care-doctors
Jim Medicare is already on track to go broke. Making it the only game in town will cause costs and therefore prices to rise or quality of care to fall. It’s a pipe dream many of us wish were possible, unfortunately it isn’t practical or affordable, especilly for people who need care the most.
So no, I am not in favor of that.
Libby the doctors are expressing a real life concern. (Not crabbing) They cannot feed their families much less fund their practices on the meager payments they’ve been receiving. The ACA does not improve this problem it compounds it!
The ACA does many things to lure people into the program. The architects of the program made a lot of assumptions about human behavior. Young people are not signing up. Medical patients are. Adding thousands of Medical patients isn’t going to make it easier to sustain the program.
Government promises about the ACA have not worked out all that well so far. No reason to believe doctors who sign up will continue to be adequately paid over time…it’s more likely they will be paid less. (Payments are being reconfigured so that some things are free and others take a big hit)
I don’t blame doctors at all for refusing to be a part of a system that is doomed to fail and in the process ruin whats left of an already damaged medical industry.
Doctors have been extremely altruistic and patient! Many of them nearing retirement age are deciding its just not worth it anymore. Young people are looking at the future and deciding medicine won’t pay enough to make the long preparation and cost for training worth it. Medicare is being robbed to help pay for Medical…how does that help? The big bloated state can’t dump thousands of patients at their doors at reimbursement rates that don’t even cover costs and expect them to serve them without having their practices collapse! And doing this at the start of the boomer retirement era…absolute idiocy!
The bottom line: The free lunch theory does not play out in practice! (Funny how it always seems to be championed by those who don’t have to make it work or bear much of the cost!)
I don’t know this for certain but I have noticed in Chico the expansion of a facility that takes Medical and Medicare patients. This was probably done with federal dollars…a grant of some kind. All well and good in the first few years. As time goes by the sheer numbers of patients and lack of funding from the feds and the state will make them difficult to maintain and sustain. Mark my words, if thr ACA survives we will all be affected in ways that will not be good and in reality will not have improved healthcare for the less fortunate.
There are better ways to solve the few problems.
The things that would make the biggest difference won’t happen. We are reduced to considering small changes that amount to rearranging the deck chairs.
We need fewer people requiring government assistance, not more. We need to spend money on training the able bodied rather than giving them open ended resources requiring nothing of them. We need government to back out of the system through gradual reform. One of the problems with the ACA is that it attempt to create nirvana..like applying a sledge hammer to the problem.
Changes that would actually work to bring down costs and get people working and caring for their own financial needs will not happen as long as the free lunch crowd refuses to face realities and fails to factor in human behaviors and responses.
Now Dewey don’t tell me you can’t appreciate using the phrase, “This is might hurt” on a post about healthcare! Maybe you’re just chronically depressed?
As for the rest…yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it before.
Please explain how advocating for smaller government and lower tax rates creates a fascist state.
Please explain how corporations force you to buy their products or stock.
Please tell us how CEO’s write legislation/regulation that controls you? What do they do to enforce these laws and regulations?
Give examples.
Tina- “Jim Medicare is already on track to go broke.”
In the same sense that the US Military is on track to go broke. Both require constant funding to protect the lives of Americans.
Even if Medicare was modified to cover everybody, it won’t be the only game in town. Medicare supplemental insurance will still be available to cover the things that Medicare doesn’t cover.
“The architects of the program made a lot of assumptions about human behavior. Young people are not signing up. Medical patients are.”
Tina, we know this. You haven’t been paying attention at all. This is exactly how it will work out.
And THEN … we will see what’s what in this country: single payer, or nothing.
Single payer makes an end-run around deficiencies in human nature for the common good. Nothing … well, nothing is your position, is it not?
And if the country, at large, goes for nothing, then we will indeed know what’s what. And it will be very sad.
Jim our government hasn’t borrowed money from military funding and issued what amounts to IOU’s. the money that is allocated toward the military is spent and we spend a heck of a lot on the one thing the federal government MUST do according to the constitution other than settle disputes between the states, legal issues, and handle foreign affairs.
So no it is not the same at all.
You are out to lunch on what will happen under single payer too. Costs will go up without competition. Quality of care will go down for all but the elites. Doctors will be in short supply. How can you not understand this?
Libby I will take nothing over single payer. The market will insure that costs go down and charity will take care of those who truly need help. Able bodied types who are just scamming the system because people like you love giving other peoples money will have to find out how to survive and thrive for once in their lives.
Sad is the thousands of people who would otherwise be working and capable if not for the saviors paying them not to care about their futures. So much easier to buy X Box, flat screen TV’s, cell phones when someone else picks up the tab for healthcare.
Libby you live in la la land.
“The market will insure that costs go down and charity will take care of those who truly need help.”
Now, you will tell us how this will come to pass. In the whole of human history, it never has. What’s changed?
Tina:”The market will insure that costs go down and charity will take care of those who truly need help…
…Libby you live in la la land.”
As you are so fond of saying…mirror? The idea that the market will take care of everything is as naive as you can get.
Hey Chris, who took care of the needy before welfare?
You guys seem to miss the whole point that people who get no health care end upin the emergency rooms. tax payers end up paying thousands for what could have been a doctors visit.
Why in the world are facts so hard? taxpayers end up paying more in the end without healthcare.
People want the ACA, are willing to iron out any problems.
Bottom line this all started in the heritage Foundation. The Koch Boys have now taken over and they do not believe in healthcare reform.
Move on to something else. Propaganda is UnAmerican
You seem to have missed the point….why turn the entire healthcare system upside to address 15% while 85% get screwed?
Libby: ” In the whole of human history, it never has.”
Yes the poor will always be with us. That doesn’t mean we have to ruin the healthcare system for everyone in America to help those who need it.
“In all of human history socialism has not delivered what was promised and has destroyed much of what could be done in a free market system. Opting for something that is too expensive, stifles innovation, costs an arm and a leg, discourages people from becoming doctors, and requires a huge bureaucracy to manage AND enforce is just stupid. Instead of paying for things related to healthcare we pay for people to handle paperwork, investigate fraud, collect taxes and punish those who refuse to comply. It’s a very poor way to manage the peoples money and a very poor way to deliver quality care. It will cause our debt to skyrocket and/or our economy to sit at levels such as we are seeing now. Maybe you’re content with mediocre at best; I am not!
It strikes me that those who love socialism lack aliveness. They feel hopeless, helpless, lacking in motivation or creativity. Unable to even witness those who do and can and rejoice for the good it does. It makes me sad to think so many Americans think like this. I strongly believe the welfare state has brought us to this.
Chris: “The idea that the market will take care of everything is as naive as you can get.”
You think the market is buildings and money. No, it is human beings being productive, pursuing happiness, and yes, profit and wealth. It is also people investing money so that citizens can buy cars and homes and send their kids to college. it is people donating to charity and foundations. It is people creating endowments and establishing hospitals. It is entrepreneurs creating new things and jobs.
People in America have been very generous. the more bureaucratic government we create the less there will be for this investment that we all count on to make our livings and serve our fellow citizens.
Socialism crushes that dynamic. Look at all of the socialist countries of the world and you will see a less vibrant, less creative, less charitable body of citizens. At the most radical you see people standing in bread lines and waiting years to find a place to live. You see families living together and a lot of alcoholism…because the state has taken l’esprit de vie from them…they have no reason to live, to create…to get up in the morning!
And Jack has a point. Families and neighbors took care of each other. Churches bonded people together. People found ways to help themselves and doctors, God bless them, were privately charitable to those they knew could not afford services. the wealthy build charitable hospitals, like St Jude.
Dewey brings up Emergency rooms and thinks this healthcare will end that. What a laugh! The shortage of doctors alone guarantee a whole lot of people, more than before cause now they have insurance, will end up in emergency rooms.
Dewey says taxpayers end up paying more but thinks the solution is creating a bigger system needing taxes to manage and collect taxes.
It isn’t that facts are hard, Dewey. We are all aware of the various problems that people were having. The problem is that the chosen solution won’t resolve the problems. It will cost more not less as promised. It will discourage doctors from entering practice or encourage early retirement or opting not to participate. It has created low premiums but very high deductibles and co-pays so that out of pocket costs exceed what people can afford. Insurance premiums are also much higher for a lot of people.
The ACA hasn’t addressed the problems…the facts with solutions that work. It has simply shifted things around and created a lot of problems for people. Now we have chaos and the problems haven’t really been fixed.
The facts, the failure, is right in front of your noses and still you deny. Incredible!
Jack: “Hey Chris, who took care of the needy before welfare?”
People who didn’t do as good of a job at alleviating poverty as welfare has. That’s just a fact; the Great Society cut the number of people living in poverty in half, and the poverty rate has never ONCE gone back to the levels this country saw before the War on Poverty began in 1964.
Chris… So if government is doing a better job at relieving poverty why do we have so many poor and homeless? I don’t buy that we cut poverty by 50%. I would like to see the data. We never had these kind of poverty numbers in CA, speaking from my perspective. Just asking…need more real data to see the big picture.
Not true Chris.
As I mentioned in comments on another thread the poverty level had been dropping dramatically when the welfare state was created. Families were more intact. County hospitals were not snazzy places but they were in place to treat the poor.
Deseret News:
Sorry but that is not a success story it is a tragedy! So many of those people are generational poverty victims of the welfare state.
“That doesn’t mean we have to ruin the healthcare system for everyone in America to help those who need it.”
And you really don’t see how selfish this is? You really don’t?
You’re actually content that umpteen million people should not have access to healthcare … just so long as you are … undisturbed.
As I said, sad.
Libby….How does objecting to punishing millions of middle income people with unaffordable healthcare and plans they do not want or need equate to selfishness? Please tell me, because I really don’t understand your statement and I doubt anyone else does either.
Here’s a thought that goes with yours…”A communist is someone who has nothing and wishes to share it with the world.”
Re #13 Chris The Punk :
You, of all people, calling Tina out on that is absolutely hilarious.
Tell you what, Chris The Punk. Why don’t you take to the next Punk level but change roles. This time whine to me about Post Scripts’ behavior.
I thought the exchange is just a marketplace to purchase insurance. If your income qualifies you get a tax subsidy to help with premiums. So I don’t know how doctors can opt out of the exchange, it is just a place to buy a Blue Cross policy.
Does this mean they are opting out of Medi-Cal and MediCare?
The poverty rate declined steadily following WWII and continued for a short time following the Great Society after which it began to climb and then bumped up and down…see chart, again!
The thing is it isn’t the numbers alone anyway. It is the change in behaviors and attitudes. It is the mentality of dependency that is bred into people. It is the break up of the family.
If the Great Society was such a good deal why do we incarcerate so many people?
In November Huffington Post:
I believe the statistics. The conclusions drawn tend to run toward racism and I think that is a bunch of hooey!
There is no doubt that black males are at a distinct disadvantage these days.
In a separate Huffington Post article the numbers of single mothers has also increased dramatically:
“Changing family structure,” says the reports author.
Incarceration rates were falling dramatically, along with the poverty rate following WWII. ((See charts) Families were intact. Businesses were sprouting like weeds. Blacks headed for Detroit where the car companies were offering opportunities for young black men who could make enough to support their families. Attitudes were changing and improving in many communities. More black families were beginning to send their kids to college because they knew it was the best guarantee for an improved life.
Most families in the fifties attended church regularly but those who didn’t still shared common values as Americans that included raising well behaved children who were expected to do well in school and graduate…no excuses! The family structure, the high standards, and the example set by the parents made all the difference.
The Historical society of Berks County Pennsylvania posted a history of black employment in that county throughout the last century with an emphasis on the first 50-60 years. It gives an accurate picture of employment and education in the black community taken from archived information and census. It records continuing discrimination but also reflects the changes that were occurring and the fact that black men and women worked to provide for their families. These were proud people. Even the poorest of families were fed and clothed, their homes kept clean.
That attitude…that pride in ones own family and home gradually began to change after 1965. There were many factors that contributed to changing values and the break up of families but one of the most devastating was the Great Society welfare system. A Democrat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned at the time that it would not be good for this nation and in particular for blacks. He was right too.
The broken healthcare system exists in part because of the broken family, the broken value system, the broken school system, the broken. The socialist radicals think more money and control from the tp is the answer. This is insanity. The numbers of people needing help would grow smaller if we addressed the number one issue that affects all of these things…the attitudes that have been created and nurtured by politicians that undermine the family and disparage decent values and high expectations for our children and from those who serve them in our schools…but mostly from parents.
What this country needs is a big fat injection of maturity. We need people to grow up and become contributing adults who work, save, take care of their children, stay married and demand high standards of each other.
Princess the exchanges are marketplaces where you can buy insurance, you’re right.
But all insurance must now comply with the ACA rules and regulations so it doesn’t matter where you buy insurance.
Doctors have been refusing to take Medicaid (Medical in CA) patients for some time. Many are beginning to refuse to take Medicare patients as well. They refuse because the government does not pay them enough for their services and now are placing a lot of barriers between them and their patients.
Doctors are not very happy and are opting to retire early. Young people are avoiding the profession because they don’t see that the cost to get the license in years and money is worth it. this will cause a severe shortage which will mean long waits to see a doctor for many Americans…some will not be able to find a doctor at all.
This was already a problem. The ACA has compounded the problem.
I hope that clarifies the situation for you.
The majority of people that have signed up on many exchanges have been Medicaid patients. The big boomer generation has begun to sign up for Medicare. The ACA robs Medicare to help pay for Medicaid (unless its been changed) so it’s a bad situation all around and a problem that has needed addressing for at least thirty years, maybe more.
“I thought the exchange is just a marketplace to purchase insurance.”
True. But the eligibility rules for Medi-Cal have been changed, and a lot of poor people are signing up, on the California Exchange, for Medi-Cal.
The Washington Times, as do all of Tina’s sources, misrepresents the event. California doctors are taking advantage of the opportunity/problem presented by the expanding Medi-Cal pool to complain about the reimbursement rate … which has always been low.
The only think I like about the ACA is that it’s churning the earth and turning up all manner of inequities, which will have to be addressed.
Libby: “The Washington Times, as do all of Tina’s sources, misrepresents the event.”
And Libby will take every opportunity available to muddy the water and distort the truth without offering evidence to the contrary!
Forbes:
The article goes on to explain how Congressional games keep doctors feeling jerked around and living with uncertainty about payments without ever being able to resolve or fix problems.
Oh, one more thing. Another article over at AEI is titled, “If you loathed HMO’s, you’re not going to like Obamacare”.
Wasn’t it in California where people were screaming like banshees at the horrors of the HMO?
I discovered a very sad HMO story here:
The law will make things much worse and will not fix the problems it was intended to fix.