May 06, 2010
Morning Edition ran a segment this morning telling us about the tragic plight of the poor doctors who don’t know how much their reimbursements will be from Medicare next month. It gave us the doctors’ perspective and also the perspective of a Medicare beneficiary who complained that she could not find doctors who are willing to work for Medicare’s pay rate.
It would have been helpful to include the perspective of an economist who could have told listeners that physicians are the most highly paid profession. An economist also could have told listeners that our physicians are paid far more than doctors in countries like Germany and Canada, which is one reason that the U.S. health care system is so uncompetitive. An economist also could have discussed the protectionist measures that keep the pay of U.S. physicians so far above world levels.
Finally, an economist could have ridiculed the idea that physicians will en masse stop accepting Medicare patients. The logic is very simple. There is no large group of wealthy potential patients that is underserved now. In other words, wealthy people already have all the doctors that they need. This means that if the nations’ physicians decide that they will not accept the 40 million Medicare beneficiaries then they will have no way to make up this lost income. They will have to get by on a lower income. The threat to just serve higher paying patients is nonsense.
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