Reply #12: You need to realize that the decision was made to include some [View All]

[truedelphi]

Five Hundred Billion dollars of cuts to Medicare as part of the "selling" point for the Health Care Reform Act. We the Public were told that the huge sums of money would come from ending the "mismanagement" and the "waste" and the "fraud."

They don't have the money or time or the staffing to properly do the "fraud" end of the situation.

So for the last six months, what you are hearing is that they can easily cut the "exorbitant" amounts paid to providers.

If you understand the positon that doctors are in, that even some twenty years ago, the decent doctors that spent real quality time with older patients and who were trained in geriatric care, they were deciding to quit having MediCare patients because they had to have at least one staff memeber spending all day dealing with the billing. And then they receive only a fraction of themoney they would receive if the patient was not MediCare.

That meant that many people I took care of (I did elder care back then) had NO provider to go to. Unless the doctor kept them on as his older patients.

People here on DU have cheered the "common sense" of Pres. Obama in choosing to cut payments to providers rather than hit the elderly with price increases. And I truly don't see where the elderly would get the ability to cover the price increases.

But if most of the providers leave the field, then what? The providers are not being paid, and the billing is complicated. So who does someone on MediCare go to, if no one in their neighborhood will see them?