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Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna
Any doctor who comes to TV will have to decide beforehand that he's willing to make his living on Medicare assignments. With the payments to doctors scheduled for substantial decreases in the next few years, you can see why many doctors are shying away from taking on any new Medicare patients.
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This is true not only for Medicare enrollees; it's true for virtually all health insurance companies who negotiate a payment rate with physicians and other medical service providers for how much to pay for what.
An example: My wife gets a routine blood test from time to time which ordinarily costs about $26. Now with Medicare--but also pre-age 65 with the health insurance plan she had as an active employee--the lab gets about $3 for drawing the blood, sending it stat (immediately) to the lab for processing, generating results for her and her MD, and of course all the paperwork. How can they possibly do this for $3? When I asked, 'Why say the charge is $26 when you get paid only $3. Who pays $26?' And the answer? 'Why, the uninsured, of course, pay full freight.'
Maybe the uninsured have to hock their eyeteeth
and their firstborn to pay.... Is this not outrageous? And yet this is how health insurance, whether Medicare or private insurance, works nowadays!