Subject: DJP Update 1-1-2010 Breaking news: A Mayo Clinic division in Arizona stops taking Medicare patients; Example of the results of government price fixing; Happy New Year!
DJP Update 1-1-2010 Breaking news: A Mayo Clinic division in Arizona stops taking Medicare patients; Example of the results of government price fixing; Happy New Year!
Throughout recorded history, price-fixing leads to scarcity of services or products. It is no different in Medicine. I have written about this many times in the DJP Updates and spoke of it in interviews and speeches and wrote about it in Op-Ed articles. As you know, some groups have entered into a Faustian bargain with those who now control the supermajority of votes in Congress and the Administration. Instead of fighting to restore liberty of contract without penalty, some medical organizations have gone along with the disaster in the details bills being pushed through the House and Senate.
These organizations keep saying they have a promise from Congress that the onerous SGR/GDP price-fixing formula will be replaced with another price-fixing formula sometime “soon.” The “soon” is no doubt the need to get the “doctor-fix” out of the bills, an exercise in “funny math” to present different numbers to the Congressional Budget Office. The promise is beginning to sound like vaporware! But even if another price-fixing formula emerges, this is not a win! What these groups fail to understand is you can’t expect to survive by changing the length of the chains that bind you or giving you an extra serving of food. Medicine doesn’t belong in chains. No crime has been committed! One must realize that giving up an essential liberty is non-negotiable.
The proper way to negotiate is to say that Congress should decide what Congress can pay for services to individuals in government plans and allow the patient and physician to negotiate the rest WITHOUT PENALTY. But alas, these groups apparently missed that course in negotiating. Do they believe that genuflecting to those in power with hopes of an increase in benefits will win them prestige or the accolades of history? This great Country of America was not born with that approach. This great Country of America was not sustained with that approach. Americans died on battlefields defending our liberty.
And please, don’t write and tell me that physicians have the right to privately contract now with all patients. Sure, you can contract in Medicare but you are kicked out for two years for just one contract for one Medicare-covered service! To tell me physicians have the right to contract in Medicare is akin to telling me a grocery has the right to turn down a demand from a mob member for protection money. Sure, the grocer can turn down the request but it is highly likely there will be harmful consequences!
It is never to late to cancel the Faustian bargain! Throughout history, people have made mistakes and later attained greatness by admitting their error and moving forward on principles. Just read history books. Just read the Bible. Stories abound of such redemption.
And now the breaking news about Mayo.
EXCERPT FROM BLOOMBERG ARTICLE DECEMBER 31, 2009 FOUND AT:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHoYSI84VdL0
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Clinic in Arizona to Stop Treating Some Medicare Patients
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.”
SECOND EXCERPT:
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.
AND THIRD EXCEPT:
Mayo’s decision may herald similar moves by other Phoenix- area doctors who cite inadequate Medicare fees as a reason to curtail treatment of the elderly, said John Rivers, chief executive of the Phoenix-based Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association.
“We’ve got doctors who are saying we are not going to deal with Medicare patients in the hospital” because they consider the fees too low, Rivers said. “Or they are saying we are not going to take new ones in our practice.”
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DJP Comment: The Mayo action is just the beginning!
LAGNIAPPE: Happy New Year! We still can save Medicine. Get involved. One vote in the Senate (60 votes needed for cloture in Senate and exactly 60 votes obtained) and three votes in the House can stop this disaster in details duo of bills (220-215 was vote for H.R. 3962 tri-committee bill).
Stay well and Happy New Year! Hope you had a wonderful holiday season. Robin and I had all the grandkids in town and four stayed overnight yesterday! What an adventure! Let’s save Medicine for our kids and grandkids and not give them a future portrayed in “We the Living” or “Dr. Zhivago”: A future of bankruptcy, scarcity, and lack of liberty.
Donald
P.S. Stop by http://twitter.com/djpNEWS and sign up for DJPNEWS to get tweet alerts that may not make it into DJP Updates.
Donald J. Palmisano, MD, JD
Intrepid Resources® / The Medical Risk Manager Company
5000 West Esplanade Ave., #432
Metairie, Louisiana USA 70006
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DJP@donaldpalmisano.com
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