Doctors treating Medicaid patients may get a pay raise next year under a new rule proposed this week, a move which could make it easier for many with disabilities to access medical care.
Traditionally, payments to physicians for treating individuals covered by the government insurer have been significantly lower than fees paid by private insurance companies. As a result, many doctors don’t accept Medicaid — which covers those who are poor or have disabilities — and enrollees in the program often report difficulties in finding doctors and getting appointments.
So bad is the problem that a study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine found that publicly-insured children are turned away by doctors two-thirds of the time. What’s more, when such kids were able to get an appointment, they had to wait more than twice as long as children covered by private insurance.
That could change under a new regulation put forth by the Obama administration this week. Federal officials are proposing a two-year pay raise for primary care doctors that would put Medicaid payments in 2013 and 2014 in line with rates that physicians receive for treating people covered by Medicare, the federal health program for seniors.
“Today’s action will help encourage primary care physicians to continue and expand their efforts to provide checkups, preventive screenings, vaccines and other care to Medicaid beneficiaries,” said Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The change was first outlined in the 2010 health care reform law, but must be implemented through regulation.
Change is good, progress is good, however, providing pay raises as an incentive when it comes to peoples health just seems ludacris. Don’t doctors get into their field of expertise primarily under an oath to take care of people’s health to begin with? To have to give them even more money to ensure adequate, accurate, compassionate, and any health service they may provide to patients for health and well being sort of represents the sheer lack of the scope of such services to people, especially those receiving Medicare or Medicaid. Why not put the money into regulation, compliance efforts where oversight, fraud or false billing and claims, are being overlooked? Physicians have taken on a responsibility of CARE…If they need more money to fufill that responsibility that comes from their hearts well then no reform or regulated health care system is going to establish better systems.
I don’t know if this will make much difference or not. Good physicians usually are not accepting any new pt. The others use the 10min time-line. The last thing they want is anything difficult especially when it concerns handicap. More stuff to research. Things get complicated. As most parents of severe handicap kids know things are never that simple.The paper work involved at multiple levels is crazy. Physicians want well babys, simple lab checks, things easy to figure out. Gone are the days of head to toe checks. If its not in 10min its not going to get done. and time is money. Finding involved physicians is hard work and for the most part I have been lucky with my daughter. I also drive 3 hours to get it. Thats my choice. Not everyone gets that choice.
keep on trucking,
mom of disabled child in mich
sincerely,
mom of disabled child in mich
I’m glad to hear that increase to reimbursement is going to be considered and hopefully implemented. Our physicians hopefully do love what they do, but they still have several years of medical school bills to pay. They have insurance premiums of their own they have to pay to practice. They have boards they have to be certified by to practice medicine (and I’m sure those aren’t free either). If client A is going to pay $50 for services and client B is going to $25 for the same service, what client do you want? A clinic is still a business and with the economy like it is, you have to keep doing business and paying your bills and paychecks. The issue is that the insurance companies are paying higher than the medicaid reimbursement rate. It’s not a question of just giving them a pay raise, the issue here is leveling the playing field so the child who receives Medicaid because of either the economic bracket their family is in or because of a disability they are living with can receive the same opportunity at accessing quality health care. In my opinion, if you want to practice medicine in a state and the state has 20% of all kids in the state on medicaid, then your practice should have about 20% of their patients being people on medicaid at a minimum.
Oh now that Obama has taken all the medicare and medicaid away, the disabled gets ‘special’ treatment. It doesn’t help at all.
Thanks Obama for nothing!
I’m all for this. My family has to drive over an hour to get to a good pediatrician who will take medicaid. We called every worthwhile doc in our area before choosing them, and they all said they couldn’t afford to take any new medicaid patients. The way they frame it at our local hospital, they claim to lose money every time a medicaid patient comes in because of the lesser pay situation. Like if a mom on medicaid delivered there and it cost 40k for an emergency c-section, medicaid only paid 20k. In an ideal world everyone would get the care they need or we would do due diligence towards solving fraud and greed, but we live in a relentlessly capitalist economy, and I want to be able to take my son to the doctor.
Angie,
How has Obama taken medicare and medicaid away. I don’t understand.
Sincerely