How to Get the Managed Care Rates You Deserve
Negotiating managed care rates is an exercise in futility for most group practices. The managed care organizations have all of the data and are usually unwilling to provide any useful subscriber enrollment data.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) is about to change that for the group practices that want to use real data to negotiate their next contract rates. The ASA has recently released the results from their annual Commercial Fee Survey. This survey data gives a group practice the data to negotiate higher rates from commercial payers.
In these increasingly tight economic times, it is vitally important that anesthesia group practices press hard for increases in their commercial and managed care rates to offset the continued reductions in Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare program rates.
Blue Dog Democrats Raise Concerns for Healthcare Reform
The Blue Dog Coalition, a group of fiscally conservative House democrats, has submitted a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer outlining a number of concerns about the Tri-Committee draft health reform bill. American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) strongly supports the Blue Dog Coalition’s concerns about a public plan option based on Medicare payment rates.
ASA President Roger A. Moore, M.D., has released the following statement in response to the Blue Dog Coalition’s letter: “On behalf of ASA’s 43,000 physician members, I applaud the Blue Dog Coalition members and leadership for opposing a public plan option based on Medicare rates, and for recognizing that a Medicare-like public option would negatively impact doctors and patients. Further, I am pleased that the Coalition maintains that physicians and other health care providers should be able to voluntarily participate in the program, rather than being mandated by Congress.
“We are working together on one of the most comprehensive health care reform efforts this government has ever undertaken. We commend the “Tri-Committee” members and staff for their efforts toward meaningful and effective delivery reform. However, we believe that as part of responsible reform, we must ensure that a public plan option fairly compensate physicians for their services. As it stands, Medicare pays anesthesiologists 33 percent of what private insurers pay—a rate that simply does not cover the costs of providing anesthesiology medical care. An expansion of this inadequate payment system as proposed by the “Tri-Committee” would not be sustainable for private practice and academic anesthesiologists.
