Bloomberg: Mayo Clinic in Arizona to Stop Treating Some Medicare Patients

[SnyderShrugged]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aHoYSI84VdL0

By David Olmos

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.

More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.

Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.

“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”

Medicare Loss

The Mayo organization had 3,700 staff physicians and scientists and treated 526,000 patients in 2008. It lost $840 million last year on Medicare, the government’s health program for the disabled and those 65 and older, Mayo spokeswoman Lynn Closway said.

more at link

[Hubbs]

Health care is such a cluster****.

[Thiebear]

Seems to exactly as was said over the last year?
As with this healthcare bill it says it will get STRICTER with doctors.
then they will sign a bill for 200 billion on a Friday night before a holiday giving doctors 200billion extra so they can keep saying that.
(and that is still below what is needed)...


Go for it... and more people will be on cash only.

Nationwide, doctors made about 20 percent less for treating Medicare patients than they did caring for privately insured patients in 2007, a payment gap that has remained stable during the last decade, according to a March report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a panel that advises Congress on Medicare issues. Congress last week postponed for two months a 21.5 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements for doctors.

Isn't that Undoing one of the "cost saving measures" in the Healthcare bill?
HELL, isnt that one of the cost saving measures in Medicare NOW! that is nolonger working? You'd think the 40million people that use it could:
Negotiate
Force
the Clinics to take them anyway for loses?


ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN/HNN/FOX/POST/TIMES: anyone report on the Congress suspending such a HUGE program? at such an awkward time?

House OKs Bill to Stop Medicare Physician Cuts

The House of Representatives, voting 243 to 183 mostly along party lines on Nov. 19, approved a bill (HR 3961) that would prevent a 21% cut in the Medicare physician payment rate scheduled at the beginning of January 2010. Instead, as proposed under the House measure, physicians would receive a 1.2% annual increase.

It was cancelled for 2 months so the senate and house could deal with it in their bill...
So doctors won't see you now and you want to propose a 21% cut in services on top of?
I think that HAS to come out of the Senate/House bill.

[Larry]

I'd really like to see some apples-to-apples comparisons, listing what the prices are for various, typical, things, that are paid by patients paying cash, Medicare, Medicaid, and some typical private insurers.

I do recall one poster posting what he said were the rates paid by various customers for one procedure that he does. (Chest x-ray?) And what I remember from that one example was that Medicare paid a bit less than, say, BCBS, (and Medicaid paid even less), but that it wasn't a lot less (they were all within 10% or so). Except for the patient who's paying cash, who paid just over triple what Medicaid patient paid.

But I don't know if those prices were typical. (Although they do match with what I've read from other sources.)

IMO, one of the things that makes this a difficult subject to discuss is that there aren't any clear, agreed-on, numbers that people can really discuss. The huge disparity between the "menu price" and "the price that 95% of the customers pay" makes it ridiculously easy for anybody with an agenda to make up any inflated statistic they want.

To pick a hypothetical, when a hospital says that "treating indigent patients cost us $10 Million last year", do they mean "if those patients had had BCBS, we would have been paid $10M"? Or do they mean "if those patients had paid the 'menu price', we would have made . . . "?

(I have the same problem with the recording industry talking about how much music piracy costs them. What they typically do to produce such huge claims is to assume that every single person who has ever downloaded a song would have paid full retail price for the album that the song was on.)

Which doesn't mean it isn't a problem. But it does mean I can't trust any number I see printed worth spit.

[Larry]

Question: Have Medicare reimbursements changed very much over the last year or three?

[Bang]

How the hell does all of this sit with the Hippocratic Oath?

I can't see how it possibly can. And it's a damn shame when doctors allow greed to get in the way of what they're SUPPOSED to be doing... or rather what they SWORE to do.

I am tired of getting ****ed by corporate greed. Really.
Off with some mother****ing HEADS.

~Bang

[Thiebear]

How the hell does all of this sit with the Hippocratic Oath?
~Bang

I don't think The Mayo clinic is KNOWN for its Greed.
This is from Arizona also:

http://www.aapsonline.org/medicare/medrep.htm 02/04/2000

[DRSmith]

I would like to see the real numbers.

[SnyderShrugged]

How the hell does all of this sit with the Hippocratic Oath?

I can't see how it possibly can. And it's a damn shame when doctors allow greed to get in the way of what they're SUPPOSED to be doing... or rather what they SWORE to do.

I am tired of getting ****ed by corporate greed. Really.
Off with some mother****ing HEADS.

~Bang

corporate greed?

This is what you get when the Feds detemine what your labor is worth.

Dont blame the Dr's, you have to blame CMS and Medicare.

How would you like to be told what you can charge for your personal labor?

[Larry]

corporate greed?

This is what you get when the Feds detemine what your labor is worth.

Dont blame the Dr's, you have to blame CMS and Medicare.

How would you like to be told what you can charge for your personal labor?

If the same hospital were to not take some form of private insurance, would you be blaming the private insurance company? Because after all, it's the insurance company's obligation to pay whatever the provider charges, isn't it?

How would you feel about a law requiring all insurance to pay the "menu price" for all medical services?

[Bang]

corporate greed?

This is what you get when the Feds detemine what your labor is worth.

Dont blame the Dr's, you have to blame CMS and Medicare.

How would you like to be told what you can charge for your personal labor?

Right, because the medical "industry" hasn't been gouging the hell out of everyone already.
Sorry, but when the same care costs less and is better in places all over the world it's painfully obvious. We're the last cash cow left, and the companies that drive the health "industry" don't want to give it up.
I don't begrudge profit, but the level of profit is staggering. And considering there's no competitor who will offer it for less, (why should they?) we're slaves to it.

And once again, how the **** does this settle with the Hippocratic Oath? Doctors SWEAR that their driving force is improving the health of anyone who needs it. Not just those who can pay for it.

~Bang

[SnyderShrugged]

If the same hospital were to not take some form of private insurance, would you be blaming the private insurance company? Because after all, it's the insurance company's obligation to pay whatever the provider charges, isn't it?

How would you feel about a law requiring all insurance to pay the "menu price" for all medical services?

No, It's the insurance company's responsibility to pay the negotiated rates that they pre-determined with the provider. If the provider doesnt feel the rate is fair, they do business with another carrier.

again, what is the cap on YOUR labor?

[Hubbs]

How the hell does all of this sit with the Hippocratic Oath?

I can't see how it possibly can. And it's a damn shame when doctors allow greed to get in the way of what they're SUPPOSED to be doing... or rather what they SWORE to do.

I am tired of getting ****ed by corporate greed. Really.
Off with some mother****ing HEADS.

~Bang

Wait, hold on, aren't they saying that they simply can't keep taking these patients if they're losing money on them?

(Obviously that claim would need to be investigated, but for the moment, let's take it at face value so we can at least examine both sides of the story. Assuming they're not lying like bald-headed LeBrons, how is that greed?)

[SnyderShrugged]

Right, because the medical "industry" hasn't been gouging the hell out of everyone already.
Sorry, but when the same care costs less and is better elsewhere it's painfully obvious. We're the last cash cow left, and the companies that drive the health "industry" don't want to give it up.
I don't begrudge profit, but the level of profit is staggering. And considering there's no competitor who will offer it for less, (why should they?) we're slaves to it.

~Bang

get away from the TV, you are misinformed.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Q...-h/profits.bmp

Come back to me when the Insurance industry has a profit in the top 10 of all industries rather than the 86th and we'll talk. Otherwise you are woefully misrepresenting the exorbitant "profits"

[DRSmith]

No, It's the insurance company's responsibility to pay the negotiated rates that they pre-determined with the provider. If the provider doesnt feel the rate is fair, they do business with another carrier.

again, what is the cap on YOUR labor?

Then why are doctors not sitting down and saying here is our cost and this is what we need to get paid.

That is what happens up here but then again docs have to it is single payer.