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No class of American professionals will be more negatively impacted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly referred to as Obamacare, than physicians.
Third-party payment arrangements are already compromising the independence and integrity of the medical profession, and Obamacare reinforces the worst of these features.
Specifically, physicians will be subject to more government regulation and oversight, and will be increasingly dependent on unreliable government reimbursement for medical services. Doctors, already under tremendous pressure, will only see their jobs become more difficult.
Despite being a massive and sweeping piece of legislation—with an estimated 165 provisions affecting the Medicare program—Obamacare leaves Medicare’s flawed physician payment system in place, providing no solution for the perpetual problem facing Medicare physicians.
Members of the medical profession expected Congress and the Administration to remedy this problem through health care reform, but they failed to do so. So, doctors continue to face the threat of deep payment cuts under Medicare’s sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula, which governs the annual growth of Medicare physician payments. The drastic provider payment cuts called for by the SGR would reduce seniors’ access to care. Thus, Congress has passed a last-minute and temporary “doc fix” each year since 2003 to override the flawed payment system. For 2014, doctors face an estimated payment reduction of 25 percent unless Congress passes another doc fix
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The lower Medicaid payments are already contributing to serious access problems for low-income persons and worsened hospital emergency room overcrowding. In 2011, one of three primary care physicians would not accept new Medicaid patients.[5]
Third-party payment arrangements are already compromising the independence and integrity of the medical profession, and Obamacare reinforces the worst of these features.
Specifically, physicians will be subject to more government regulation and oversight, and will be increasingly dependent on unreliable government reimbursement for medical services. Doctors, already under tremendous pressure, will only see their jobs become more difficult.
The Flawed Medicare Payment Formula
Despite being a massive and sweeping piece of legislation—with an estimated 165 provisions affecting the Medicare program—Obamacare leaves Medicare’s flawed physician payment system in place, providing no solution for the perpetual problem facing Medicare physicians.
Members of the medical profession expected Congress and the Administration to remedy this problem through health care reform, but they failed to do so. So, doctors continue to face the threat of deep payment cuts under Medicare’s sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula, which governs the annual growth of Medicare physician payments. The drastic provider payment cuts called for by the SGR would reduce seniors’ access to care. Thus, Congress has passed a last-minute and temporary “doc fix” each year since 2003 to override the flawed payment system. For 2014, doctors face an estimated payment reduction of 25 percent unless Congress passes another doc fix
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The lower Medicaid payments are already contributing to serious access problems for low-income persons and worsened hospital emergency room overcrowding. In 2011, one of three primary care physicians would not accept new Medicaid patients.[5]
