Medicare Nightmare for Doctors & Patients

In three western states – California, Hawaii and Nevada – doctors who accept Medicare as payment for patients are stuck between a huge rock and a very, very hard place.  They are in a situation where Medicare’s payment backlog has created a multimillion dollar problem.  They now have to make some vey difficult choices between their patients and their practice.

This is not a small thing.  This is a situation where many doctors have not been paid by Medicare since February.  How many of us could go through almost a full year with a large part of our salary unpaid? 

It is understandable that there can be backlogs from time to time in a system as large and complex as Medicare, but no payments for almost 10 months is much more than a small backlog.  It is a backlog of epic proportions.

The situation has forced some doctors to have to drop some or all of their Medicare patients.  Other doctors are on the verge of declaring bankruptcy or have already done so.  This has hurt the doctors in many ways – including, of course, financially – but it leaves thousands upon thousands of patients without a personal physician who can provide adequate services to keep their health conditions under control.

What does it say when the doctors who are willing to treat the most needy patients are being forced out of business or forced to drop those very patients because the system that is supposed to care for them is hurting them?  How can the system be fixed so that the most vulnerable among us get the care they need from the system that they paid into for year after year?

Medicare says that the reason is that doctors who were to switch to a new identification number for claims (sort of like a social security number) did not do so.  The doctors say that the numbers were never given to them until they contacted Medicare time after time over several months to finally get their identification number.  In addition, Medicare moved processing to another area and there were “glitches” in the move – many of which are still not fixed.

At present, Medicare says they are fixing the problems, but for many of the doctors who were severely affected, the damage has been done, and for their patients, they are left looking for medical care. 

Medicare reform is a top priority at this time.  With changes that have come to pass recently, Medicare recipients and their doctors can hope that the future goes much better than the present and the past.

Filed under: General-Medicare

Tags: doctors, General-Medicare, health care, Medicare Payments, medicare recipients