The federal government might default on its debt sometime next week. This potential scenario has doctors and hospitals very worried. Physicians groups are warning their members that there is a possibility that their Medicare paychecks will stop coming. This could lead to doctors refusing to take patients who are using Medicare, until the “debt ceiling” issue is resolved.
It seems to me that Medicare has been in the news quite frequently in the past year. It has been said that the federal government is about to run out of funding for Medicare very soon. In part, this has been connected with the large Baby Boomer generation coming of age, and being eligible for Medicare.
Recently, the Medicare program decided to stop paying hospitals for treatments that were done in error, or were not at all necessary. In other words, if doctors or hospitals make mistakes, then Medicare isn’t going to pay them for the botched health care they provided.
The news also had articles about how doctors and dentists are becoming quite reluctant to take patients that are children who are using Medicaid as their form of health insurance. Typically, Medicare, and Medicaid, pay doctors a fraction of what they would be paid for their services, when compared to what the private insurance companies will pay doctors for the exact same thing.
The American Academy of Family Physicians has sent out a warning to its 100,000 members. They fear that if the federal government defaults on its debt that it will result in a delay in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals.
The American College of Surgeons also warned its members that unless Congress and the President raise the debt ceiling by August 2, 2011, there will be a problem with Medicare payments. Specifically, there is concern that these payments will cease.
If these physician groups are correct, and the federal government stops sending Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals, this is problematic. There is a good chance that doctors will become even more selective about what types of patients they will choose to treat.
They could decide to stop accepting patients who use Medicare. In other words, this will directly impact all those Baby Boomers who finally got accepted to the Social Security and Medicare programs. This will make it much harder for the people who use Medicare to find doctors that will accept them as patients.
Image by Nic McPhee on Flickr