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Texas Insider Report: DALLAS Texas Medicares doc fix has been enacted and reenacted countless times over the past decade says Jeffrey A. Singer a surgeon in Phoenix Arizona. Each time the day of reckoning approaches the American Medical Association (AMA) and others implore Congress to prevent the cuts under the sustainable growth rate.
They argue correctly that cuts to physicians reimbursements will decrease the number of doctors participating in Medicare. As more doctors leave the argument goes seniors will get less access to health care.
Inevitably in the eleventh hour Congress fixes the problem by passing temporary legislation upping the reimbursement rates.
Yet there is a simple short-term solution to the dilemma faced by Medicare its beneficiaries and its providers says Singer.
- Let Medicare providers set their own fees and end the ban on whats known as balance billing.
Prior to the institution of government price controls in the 1980s
- Medicare would pay a provider based upon a predetermined fee schedule.
- Providers were free to bill the patients for the unpaid balance of their fees.
- Assume for example that Medicare would pay $80 for an office visit; a doctor could accept that in full or charge $100 or $120 or whatever to his patients.
If doctors were set free from Medicare price controls by ending the ban on balance billing then the Medicare administrators would be better able to
reduce Medicares contribution to provider reimbursement without fear of a physician exodus from the system.
The entire doc fix debate would become moot.
As Medicare beneficiaries pay a greater proportion of the providers bills market forces will ensue and price competition will lead to better choices for senior patients says Singer.
Source: Jeffrey A. Singer
A Simple Way to Improve Medicare Reason Magazine November 25 2010.
