Medicare Myth

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Mark Twain Critics of the Medicare program often allege that the restrictive Medicare regulations and bare-bone reimbursements are causing a rising number of doctors to refuse to serve Medicare patients.According to a recent editorial in the NYT "In the critics’ most dire scenarios, baby boomers nearing retirement age could find that their current doctors are no longer willing to treat them under Medicare and that other doctors are turning them down as well." But is this true? A recent analysis by experts at the Department of Health and Human Services finally debunked this myth! The analysts looked at seven years of federal survey data and found that doctors are not fleeing Medicare in droves; in fact, the percentage of doctors accepting new Medicare patients actually rose to 90.7 percent in 2012 from 87.9 percent in 2005. They are not shunning Medicare patients for better-paying private patients, either; the percentage of doctors accepting new Medicare patients in recent years was slightly higher than the percentage accepting new privately insured patients. Still, a small number of doctors have dropped out of the Medicare program. Roughly 9,500 practicing doctors have currently opted out of Medicare, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services but the number of doctors opting out is tiny compared with the number of doctors, 735,000, who remain in Medicare. These findings should encourage us to work even closer with Medicare, to participate in quality improvements and pay-for-performance initiatives to reduce healthcare costs and to maintain this valuable program which provides essential healthcare for 16% of US citizens. Yours Bernd