Medicare Maneuvers, Part 2: The Solution?
July 3, 2008
As we wrote about yesterday, payment cuts for doctors who treat Medicare patients finally went into effect July 1. Unfortunately, the first legislative attempt to block the looming doctor payment cuts didn’t come until the end of 2007, and was part of the doomed legislation to improve public funding for children’s health care (see WhatIf’s piece on SCHIP). With the competing SCHIP bills finally all defeated this spring by Presidential vetoes and Republican opposition, there was little time left to deal with doctor payment cuts before the July deadline.
Medicare Maneuvers, Part 1: The Problem
July 2, 2008
Payment cuts for doctors who treat Medicare patients - which have been looming for about a year - finally went into effect yesterday. The payment cuts of 10.6% will affect the 600,000 doctors who treat Medicare patients, and thus millions of elderly and disabled Medicare enrollees who rely on them.
Maybe if you’re under 65 and/or not relying on government health care benefits you think this isn’t your problem. You’re wrong.
A little history (based on the writings of Jonathan Cohn):
The Return of the Cavity Creeps
February 1, 2008
Dental care seems to be experiencing the same cost increases that medical care is. Which may be why one in four children and adults - who aren’t necessarily low-income - have untreated cavities. At least twice in 2007, a child died from an infection caused by decayed teeth.
Unlike medical doctors, however, dentists’ salaries are actually rising, in part because their numbers aren’t increasing while the nation’s population is. Limited supply leads to high demand leads to the ability of dentists to charge higher prices, which they’re doing.
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