How ObamaCare Will Affect Your Doctor

Is that really a word, Obamacare? I guess so. Anyway, this is the headline of an article in the Wall Street Journal, and it is interesting.  It is written by Scott Gottlieb, who used to work at the FDA, for Medicare and now is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a practicing internist. He’s also partner to a firm that invests in health-care companies, so keep all this in mind as you read his take on healthcare.

That said, I do agree with what he is saying, about a need to fix the reimbursement for physicians and other practitioners, particularly at the primary care level.

From WSJ:

At the heart of President Barack Obama’s health-care plan is an insurance program funded by taxpayers, administered by Washington, and open to everyone. Modeled on Medicare, this “public option” will soon become the single dominant health plan, which is its political purpose. It will restructure the practice of medicine in the process.

Chad Crowe

Republicans and Democrats agree that the government’s Medicare scheme for compensating doctors is deeply flawed. Yet Mr. Obama’s plan for a centrally managed government insurance program exacerbates Medicare’s problems by redistributing even more income away from lower-paid primary care providers and misaligning doctors’ financial incentives.

Right now, Medicare pays docs 20-30% less than private plans, and the new public option will control spending by using its purchasing clout and political leverage to dictate low prices to doctors. The intention is to help the uninsured, but may lead to something more–and the result, like now with Medicare and Medicaid, is for doctors to refuse patients covered by these policies.

There are other ways to lower costs, than cutting into reimbursement. For starters, we should make it less expensive to become a physician–most graduate about $150,00 in debt. And then there’s the cost of malpractice, running an office, paying staff, and so on. Let’s start at the very beginning…