Harder to Find Doctors Accepting Medicare
With all the financial issues surrounding Medicare it has become harder to find doctors who readily accept Medicare, or even accept it at all.
Before the increase of fraud, red tape, financial woes, budget constraints and the like, doctors who accepted Medicare were not hard to find. Many doctors used to set aside a percentage of their time to devote to Medicare patients. They certainly weren’t making money on these patients, in fact, many times, they did not even break even by covering expenses, but the income from their overall practice absorbed the losses. Though Medicare was not a perfect system, it worked out for the doctors and their patients.
More recently, with all the Medicare woes, including very slow reimbursement at an extremely reduced rate, the majority of doctors say that it is too expensive to treat Medicare patients. They want to treat these patients and try to treat as many as possible, but are unable to take on new Medicare patients for financial reasons. Their regular practices cannot absorb the losses any longer.
This is not just frustrating to the doctors who would like to help these patients, but it is frightening and frustrating to patients who have spent a lifetime paying into a system that promised healthcare coverage but is now in such shambles that the doctors and specialists these patients need the most will not accept it for payment. This critical situation nationwide is leaving too many of our most vulnerable citizens without adequate care and actually making them more vulnerable because of it.
Lawmakers continue to say they are trying to fix the ailing system but are caught up in partisan arguing rather than bipartisan efforts, while the situation continues to worsen. The question arises as to whether they would rather pay out hundreds for office visits that prevent major health issues or thousands to pay for the health conditions that are not treated because of being penny wise and dollar foolish, as well as short sighted. Surely if there is enough money to fund billions for war, there should be enough to send Medicare recipients to the doctor.
As fewer doctors accept Medicare, there is the real possibility of a far worse health crisis than we see today. If you have Medicare benefits, check with your doctor and call others to make sure they will accept it. You can also call your local health department or hospital for further information about doctors in your area.
There are doctors who continue to accept Medicare, but it is becoming more difficult to find them and Medicare recipients who should be automatically taken care of are having to search for services. The system needs fixing NOW.
