Primary Care Doctors And The Medicare Boycott
I saw this interesting article linked to from a blog about angry doctors dropping out of Medicare in Texas. As one who shares the universal annoyance at congress’ failure to fix the SGR for more than 30 days at a time, I was kind of cheered by this. That’s what it will take to get the system fixed — a grassroots, full-scale rejection of the system! Good for them. And the opening lines of the article were encouraging:
Texas doctors are opting out of Medicare at alarming rates, frustrated by reimbursement cuts they say make participation in government-funded care of seniors unaffordable.
An “alarming” rate. Wow. Cool. So how many is that, anyway?
More than 300 doctors have dropped the program in the last two years, including 50 in the first three months of 2010, according to data compiled by the Houston Chronicle. Texas Medical Association officials, who conducted the 2008 survey, said the numbers far exceeded their assumptions.
That’s 300, right? Hmm, not too shabby. Not exactly going to topple the state with that, but it’s a start.
Hey, I wonder how many doctors there are in Texas, anyway? I hear it’s a pretty big state, though I seem to recall it consists mostly of scrubland and swamp. Maybe there are only like 500 doctors in the state to start with. Something is tickling my head about Texas, though, I vaguely remember that they had some nice tort reform law a few years ago that I was pretty envious of. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
