Survey Shows Physicians Limiting Practice Access for Medicare and Medicaid Patients
More than 50 percent of physicians have limited access to their practice for Medicare patients or are planning to do so in the future according to a recent survey commissioned by the Physicians Foundation. In addition, 26 percent of survey respondents have stopped seeing additional Medicaid patients at this time. Physicians cite rising operating costs, time constraints, and diminishing reimbursement as the primary reasons for not accepting additional Medicare and Medicaid patients.
The survey also indicates that physician morale is low with more than 75 percent of respondents being pessimistic about the future of the medical profession. Physicians are not uniform in their opinions, with younger, female, employed, and primary care physicians being generally more positive about the profession.
The survey, conducted this spring by Merritt Hawkins via email, was sent to more than 600,000 physicians across the United States with 13,575 responding.
Supreme Court upholds Affordable Care Act
In a surprise decision, it appears the Supreme Court has upheld all of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The individual mandate, which guarantees health insurance to virtually every U.S. citizen, has been held constitutional as a tax levied by the federal government.
The court also has upheld an expansion of Medicaid coverage which is set to add millions of low-income Americans to the rolls. However, the court has limited the federal government’s ability to impose penalties on non-compliant states, according to SCOTUSblog. The court has limited this expansion, but has not invalidated it.
All other features of the law are retained, including:
- accountable care organizations (ACOs) and other care-transition programs;
- payments for preventive services, such as annual wellness visits (AWVs);
- the home health and hospice face-to-face encounter requirements.
