affect of the affordable care act on medical providers

[Guest021716-4]

Just curious to hear what medical providers or health care professionals have to say about it.

[teyeger72]

Last I heard, many doctors (including my own) are either leaving the profession, going overseas, or not taking new patients thanks to the lower medicaid/medicare reimbursement rates and increased paperwork requirements.

[txcwby4u]

Most in the industry are already doing one of two things:
1. Finding a larger entity to work under, ie: hospital, ACO, nationwide specialist company
2. Finding new revenue streams outside of Medicare, ie: private client, non-medicare supplement

I think we will all have to keep changing the business model. AGAIN!

[Guest021716-4]

Thanks guys! If someone wishes to discuss the details further, I am all ears.

[Poet Laureate]

Not taking new patients is one option, if the medical provider has a large practice with many Medicare or Medicaid (M&M) patients and can't afford to just stop taking M&M altogether. M&M typically pay such an insultingly low amount to the provider that the only way many of them have stayed in business is by recouping those lost dollars by raising prices for those patients who have insurance, or by sticking it to uninsured but working patients by sending their partially paid bills, which almost always are more than what M&M pay, to the leeches in the collection industry. This is borderline criminal behavior and should be addressed, but of course it's not, because the health care lobby is just too powerful.
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What will happen, and in fact has already begun, is that more and more medical providers will stop taking M&M at all. This will limit the availability of medical care for those in the M&M programs, and will reduce the quality of the care they receive, since the more skilled practitioners won't be the ones treating the M&M patients.
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One side effect will be that more doctors will seek to become employees of hospitals and medical centers, seeking to trade a lucrative practice that has brutal hours but a very high income for job security with hours that are not quite so bad, a more modest income that will still be more than most of us will ever see, and a corporate umbrella to protect him or her when the inevitable malpractice suit is filed.
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We do need health care reform, badly. But this isn't the answer.

[Sidewinder]

Dude, if you want that "more modest income that will still be more than most of us will ever see", nothing and nobody is stopping you. All you have to do is graduate from high school, with grades and test scores good enough to get into a good school with a good pre-med program, do your four(plus) years of college, graduate (typically with five figures of college debt), do well on the MCATs, get admitted to med school, make it through med school and internship and graduate (now with easily six figures of debt).

[Poet Laureate]

So they end up making $125k or more, and having to pay down school debt with $10k a year of that. Like I said, still more than most of us will ever see.