Reprehensible Republicans Ruin Medicare

Do you remember reading this from the Associated Press in mid-April? 

Suddenly, bipartisanship has broken out on Capitol Hill.

We were supposed to feel so proud of our Congress! They worked together, reached across the aisle, and enacted a permanent repeal of Medicare’s reviled SGR Fix (or Doc Fix)! 

Well, the Drive-By Media didn’t tell the rest of the story. What happened is this:

212 House Republicans and 46 Senate Republicans
joined the Democrats in radically changing the way
Medicare providers are paid
— and controlled —
by the federal government.

That’s right. The same GOP leaders vowing to repeal Obamacare just grafted it Big Time onto Medicare.

We expect this from the progressive members of Congress. But weren’t we supposed to expect a Republican Congress to lessen the size and scope of government? Didn’t last November’s election results reflect “a mandate to pass sensible legislation?”

And they wonder why we don’t take them seriously.

So who’s gonna pay for this knucklehead move? Eventually, you. 

Thanks to Congress, it’ll soon be very difficult to find a health care professional who’ll accept your Medicare card, since MACRA (Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act) applies Obamacare’s experiments to the whole program.

It wasn’t as if Medicare was untouched before MACRA, despite what HuffPo’s Jeffrey Young thinks. Thanks to Obamacare, pay-for-performance schemes like Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) began in Medicare in 2012, and they’ve produced less than impressive results thus far. That didn’t stop our 2015 Republican “leaders” from expanding them.

What are ACOs? Think of the Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) of the 1990s, an idea that proved so wildly unpopular that patients revolted in near-universal protests about limited provider networks and rationed care. 

Still, the Obamacare Congress thought it was wise to apply HMO 2.0 to Medicare patients, but with an additional feature: patient satisfaction scores. That means ACO providers are financially rewarded for limiting care and procedures, but also have to make the patient feel happy about it!

(Never mind that payment for satisfaction is associated with higher health care expenses and a greater likelihood of hospitalization and death. The Obamacare Congress knows best.)

MACRA essentially forces all Medicare providers into Obamacare’s experimental ACOs. This spells the end to private independent healthcare practices, as providers must align themselves with a huge health system to survive.

Well, to be fair, doctors do have a choice. They can continue in traditional fee-for-service care, but anti-Obamacare warrior and ophthalmologist Kris Held explains the dangers of this route:

Government bureaucrats and committees will call the shots for Medicare patients. The law actually creates Alternative Payment Models (APMs) and a Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) which require physicians to follow a government rubric on which we will be graded in grade school fashion. Physicians, now defined as “eligible providers,” will get grades from 0-100 as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The grade for doing what the Secretary prescribes is called the Composite Performance Score. The score is publicly posted on the Physician Compare Internet Website of CMS, and the Secretary of HHS assigns each physician a payment adjustment factor based on this score. The payment adjustment factor will be positive, 0, or negative. Based on how well a doctor “performs” for the Secretary, the pay could be adjusted 9% up or 9% down, meaning the Secretary’s most compliant doctors will be paid 18% more than those who don’t perfectly make her wishes our commands. What will doctors put up with, and what will we do or not do for patients in order to be paid 18% more than those government deems “less quality” doctors and to avoid public humiliation on the government website? This is indeed chronic and continued abuse taken to a higher, institutionalized level.

That’s right. In either scenario, doctors will be scrutinized by federal bureaucrats aiming to reduce Medicare expenses by dictating care according to one-size-fits-all treatment protocols.

Since the passage of MACRA, many doctors are considering resignation from Medicare. “Opt out providers” will still treat you, but you’re gonna have to pay privately, outside Medicare’s supervision and reimbursement mechanisms.

This has one obvious disadvantage for the typical Medicare patient, since, depending upon the arrangement negotiated, costs may be higher to see these opt-out doctors. 

But it also means Creepy Uncle Sam won’t be in the exam room, and you’ll have care that is tailored to the individual, not forced onto you by Washington DC bean counters.

And it’s likely to be far more affordable than you may think, since health care professionals who opt out of arrangements with government and private insurance have reduced overhead costs. These doctors can charge less than their hand-cuffed peers, who can’t reduce fees for cash patients without violating government and insurance contracts.

As the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons pointed out when MACRA was passed, “opted-out physicians are able to charge a mutually agreeable fee (sometimes lower than the Medicare copayment), drastically reduce administrative overhead, give their patients the time that they need, keep records confidential, and prescribe according to their best judgment rather than a government-approved protocol.”

It’s reasonable to expect that, due to the “rising misery index” and increasing retirement rates among physicians, there will be far fewer of them in coming years. Among those that remain, a growing number will opt out of The System.

And you’ll know who to blame. This time, Republicans are the ones who apparently didn’t bother to read the bill.

Medicare providers wishing to learn how to opt out can visit here.

Americans wishing to do business with liberty-minded physicians can find them here.