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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (79851)	5/19/2010 5:33:51 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Hope and change: Texas doctors fleeing from Medicare By: Mark Hemingway Commentary Staff Writer 05/18/10 2:34 PM EDT If there's one lesson to learn from the Obamacare debacle, it's that health insurance is not the same thing as health care. Just because you have insurance, doesn't mean you're going to find a doctor willing to take it. This is especially true when that insurance comes from the government and pays below market rates: <<< 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. Two years after a survey found nearly half of Texas doctors weren't taking some new Medicare patients, new data shows 100 to 200 a year are now ending all involvement with the program. Before 2007, the number of doctors opting out averaged less than a handful a year. “This new data shows the Medicare system is beginning to implode,” said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the Texas Medical Association. “If Congress doesn't fix Medicare soon, there'll be more and more doctors dropping out and Congress' promise to provide medical care to seniors will be broken.” 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. >>> Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com