Virginia Democrat Calls For Forcing Doctors To Accept Medicare And Medicaid Patients
November 02, 2013
You would think that when your party is digging a hole, that is getting harder and harder to get out of, you wouldn't want that hole to get deeper faster. But here is Kathleen Murphy, Democrat running for the House against Barbara Comstock, telling a forum in Great Falls that she believes it should law to force doctors to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients. Forced by government decree, mind you.
FYI last night at the Great Falls Grange debate, Democrat delegate candidate Kathleen Murphy said that since many doctors are not accepting medicaid and medicare patients, she advocates making it a legal requirement for those people to be accepted.She did not recognize that the payments are inadequate to cover the doctors' costs. She also did not recognize there is a shortage of over 45,000 physicians now and that it is forecast to be 90,000 in a few years.Democrats appear to want to make physicians slaves of the state, but Democrats don't admit they would just drive more doctors out of practice into retirement and other occupations. The Obamacare law and regulations are causing millions of people to lose their health insurance, drop many doctors and hospitals. The HHS internal forecast is 93 million Americans would lose their health insurance due to the Obamacare law and rules about adequacy of insurance.Many more people will be uninsured. The penalties for being uninsured start at $95 per year, but the penalties can't be collected by the IRS if a person does not have a tax refund to attach.The out of pocket costs required by Obamacare's Silver Plan for a non-smoking mother and father with two children making a gross before income taxes of $50,000 (roughly average salary for VA) would be $13,765 per year including the deductible of $10,400. That's 28% of their gross income -- not very affordable and about the same as guidelines for a mortgage payment. For such a family making $100,000 of gross income, The cost would be $21,431 including the deductible of $12,700, or 21% of gross income.With such high deductibles doctors are stuck with trying to collect cash from the patients, even at regulated charge structures. Thus is makes sense for primary care doctors not to participate in Obamacare, medicare and medicaid. They should encourage patients to participate in Concierge Care and insurance programs run by the doctors themselves with patients who can do simple math. Patients can take out catastrophic insurance with high deductibles for major surgeries. Tax deductability for individual medical savings accounts would make health care more affordable.
The head of Obamacare programs, Berwick, loves the socialized medical system in the UK, but never mentions that malpractice insurance is minimal. In the UK, panels of doctors review and approve malpractice awards, rather than emotional juries misled by trial lawyers. Malpractice reform like this with caps on malpractice awards would go a long way in making health care affordable.I hope physicians rise up and speak out for common sense, protecting quality medical care in the US and giving patients freedom to choose
THIS along with the fact that Terry McAuliffe has already said he'd go to the government shutdown mat to get a state exchange in Virginia. Unbelievable. Combine the chaos of thousands of people across Virginia losing their health insurance, we are going to add to that on the state level by forcing doctors to accept patients they can't afford to help? Unbelievable. Dark days are ahead, but there is still time. Three days to make sure this does not happen.
Democrats in Virginia will drive up health care costs, drive doctors out of the state, and then drive health care costs up even more because there will not be enough doctors practicing in the state.
Could Virginia Start Forcing MD's to Accept Medicare & Medicaid Patients?
FYI last night at the Great Falls Grange debate, Democrat delegate candidate Kathleen Murphy said that since many doctors are not accepting medicaid and medicare patients, she advocates making it a legal requirement for those people to be accepted.
She did not recognize that the payments are inadequate to cover the doctors' costs. She also did not recognize there is a shortage of over 45,000 physicians now and that it is forecast to be 90,000 in a few years.
Democrats appear to want to make physicians slaves of the state, but Democrats don't admit they would just drive more doctors out of practice into retirement and other occupations. The Obamacare law and regulations are causing millions of people to lose their health insurance, drop many doctors and hospitals. The HHS internal forecast is 93 million Americans would lose their health insurance due to the Obamacare law and rules about adequacy of insurance.
Many more people will be uninsured. The penalties for being uninsured start at $95 per year, but the penalties can't be collected by the IRS if a person does not have a tax refund to attach.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe is promising to go toe to toe with the Republican state legislature to set up an Obamacare state exchange in Virginia. Additionally, McAuliffe is running on a campaign promise to expand Medicaid across the Commonwealth. However, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis, there are simply not enough doctors in Virginia to accommodate such an expansion under Obamacare:
Effect of the ACA on Virginia's Physician Supply.
As in other states, Virginia's physician supply is relatively "inelastic," meaning the number of physicians cannot increase quickly to accommodate the rising demand for medical services an influx of newly insured Medicaid enrollees would create. Virginia physicians have little if any capacity to expand the number of patients they treat. Currently, there are about 29,472 physicians in Virginia, of whom an estimated 22,215 are actively involved in patient care.12 About 85 percent of Virginia's active doctors work full time - so there is little excess capacity.
http://www.dhp.virginia.gov/hwdc/docs/Medicaid%20Map%20Packet.pdf
According to the Virginia Department of Health Professions Healthcare Workforce Data Center, two-thirds of Virginia's active physicians are more than 44 years of age, while 20.1 percent are 60 or older.13 Thus, many of these physicians will retire in the next few years. A number of economic studies indicate the newly insured will nearly double their consumption of medical care.14 Yet the demand for health care will continue to rise. Furthermore, an aging population will require more medical care. Across the U.S. 78 million baby boomers are either retired or headed that way in the next decade.
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New Report: Medicaid Workforce Map Packet
by Steve Horan, Community Health Solutions
The Virginia Department of Health Professions, through its Health Workforce Data Center, has published a report titled ‘Medicaid Workforce Map Packet.’ This report provides a series of maps displaying the distribution of physician and mid-level providers relative to the estimated number of uninsured adults age 19-64 with income up to 138% of the federal poverty level (the group that would be income-eligible for Medicaid if Virginia chooses to enact a Medicaid expansion.) The researchers used multiple methods to estimate the supply of willing Medicaid providers by city, county and local health district. The uninsured estimates were obtained from the Virginia Atlas of Community Health. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the supply of health care providers available to serve enrollees in an expanded Medicaid program. Click here to view the report.
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