Reply #10: We just did went through this... [View All]

[importDavid]

My wife has a solo Family Practice here in Kansas City with about 17% of our patient base on Medicare and Medicaid.

Six months ago when rates were cut YET AGAIN I did an revised analysis of just how much profit we were making for these folks... and discovered that we were actually LOSING 7-14% on each office visit (with overhead).

After that discovery we regretably changed our office policy to not allow any new Medicare/Medicaid patients - with the exception of extended family members of existing patients.

We also "fired" half of the most delinquent Medicare/Medicaid accounts. We have started to fill these "holes" in our schedule with patients with other insurance companies that actually pay their procedures.

We really hated to do this, but we're not a "not for profit" and we have to support our 3 full-time staffers - as well as us!

A side effect of all this happening is that my previous corporate-business-oriented Republican voting wife has had it with all this crap - and is a solid Democrat at this point. Thanks to DU and Bill Maher as well!

I just had to plunk my $0.02 in the jar.

Thanks for reading.