The demise of Medicare

[formerlurker]

Medicare beneficiaries’ access to care is in crisis. Some examples, which I cite in a recent briefing paper:

* Last October, the Mayo clinic decided that it could no longer accept Medicare patients at its two primary-care clinics in Phoenix.

* An elderly woman in Virginia Beach, VA, recently called 40 primary-care doctors, none of whom would accept Medicare patients anymore. (One can reasonably presume that many patients have had similar experiences without reporting them to the media.)

* In Texas, where a 2008 survey found that half of physicians were no longer accepting Medicare patients, a 2010 survey found that the numbers declining any participation in Medicare were increasing by 100 to 200 annually.

* Last year, Houston’s Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, that city’s largest medical practice, announced that it would no longer accept new patients enrolled in the traditional Medicare Part B program, because reimbursements had fallen too low.  Almost all of the clinic’s patients have switched to Medicare Advantage plans, most of which negotiate their own payment rates with providers.

Unfortunately, many seniors who have access to Medicare Advantage plans will soon lose them, despite the government’s misrepresenting this consequence of Obamacare. Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. secretary of Health & Human Services, recently sent a piece of appallingly inaccurate junkmail to Medicare beneficiaries, which contained the falsehood that “Your Medicare benefits won’t change — whether you get them through Original Medicare or a Medicare Advantage plan.” In fact, the chief actuary of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services estimates that 7.4 million Medicare beneficiaries will lose their Medicare Advantage plans by 2017, one half of those who would have enjoyed that choice under pre-Obamacare Medicare.

http://www.nationalreview.com/critical-condition/204115/will-congress-fix-medicare-doc-fix-june-15/john-r-graham