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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (607885)	4/15/2011 2:20:00 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583325

>> That's a false choice... It isn't a false choice for Medicare/Medicaid patients. And frankly, the situation is worse with Medicaid, where there are simply not enough providers of ANY kind to take care of them because providers are fed up with not being sufficiently compensated for the work they do. In Arkansas, an OB/GYN is paid a global fee for 5-7 prenatal visits plus a vag delivery a grand total of $1,200. That includes labs, ultrasounds, the works. Think about that. 5-7 office visits, PLUS the delivery, PLUS out of pocket expenses for labs and ultrasound, and you get $1,200? What doctor is going to do this? It just doesn't make financial sense, when Arkansas BCBS pays $2,700 for the same service. That provider also may be paying as much as $300,000/year for malpractice insurance (and like it or not, Medicaid patients subject providers to increased malpractice risk). I'll admit a lot of physicians are poor businesspeople, but they can afford good consultants. And what we tell clients is to run like hell from Medicaid.

To: Alighieri who wrote (607885)	4/15/2011 2:52:36 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583325

Al, > That's a false choice... Let me rephrase it. You wouldn't mind talking to a PA or an APN over an MD, even if that was determined by bureaucracy instead of quality of health care. I don't know about you, but I'd be a little nervous if, for anything other than minor conditions, the only people I saw were PAs or nurses. In the name of cost control, patients may have to tolerate much less access to doctors. Maybe you don't mind that, but I suspect a lot of people would. Tenchusatsu