Nice Picture

It’s kind of amazing how a big colorful picture can dominate a news story even when it has precious little to do with the subject at hand. To wit, this image: now graces the top of page A3 in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, illustrating an article headlined: Paid more, doctors saw more Medicaid patients, Penn study finds In other news: Water is wet. Pardon my snark. I suppose demonstrating things that are intuitively obvious can be useful at times. Especially when dealing with the government, which includes large numbers of people who refuse to believe just about anything that hasn’t passed across their desk in triplicate. So the big news for the day was that there is now actual evidence that increasing payments (not “reimbursements“!) to doctors allows us to provide care to people for whom we would not otherwise be able to do so. Able; not just willing. However, as I am quoted somewhat extensively toward the end of the piece, for many of us it wasn’t enough. Here’s why, though (and this didn’t make it into the article): that $35 quoted as an office visit payment from Medicaid is a fiction, at least in my state. See, Pennsylvania administers Medicaid (it’s called “ACCESS”; Orwellian, isn’t it?) entirely through managed care programs. Capitated HMOs. There is no way for any doctor to get paid fee for service for Medicaid in Pennsylvania. Apparently they publish fee schedules to fulfill ACA requirements. ...
Source: Musings of a Dinosaur - Category: Primary Care Authors: Tags: Medical Source Type: blogs