AMA addresses Medicare reimbursement cuts

In a Q&A with UPI, William Plested III, president of the AMA, discusses the impact of Medicare reimbursement rate cuts on physicians. He says that their primary concern is that physicians--particularly geriatricians--won't be able to afford taking on more elderly patients if Medicare doesn't reimburse them properly. According to an AMA study, 45 percent of physicians say the cuts will impact how many Medicaid patients they accept (though Plested does admit that percentage could have a high margin of error). Physicians who treat their practice as a business will be the first to cut back on their Medicare patient acceptance as they realize how the reimbursements hurt their business's bottom line. Individual doctors, Plested speculates, will be more hesitant to turn Medicare patients away. He suggests that the federal government should fix the problem by reimbursing doctors for the actual cost of doing business. In response to objections that Medicare resources are limited, Plested states, "…the physician's job is not to pay for something that the government promises to the elderly in this country. The physicians' job is to guarantee a high level of care."

To read the full Q&A:
- see the interview from UPI

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