My father’s a retired radiologist and when my sisters and I were growing up, he always dreamed one of us would become a doctor. My middle sister showed the most promise, as she was in the gifted and talented program, but she fainted whenever she saw blood. My oldest sister wanted to be a nun. (Thank God that didn’t happen.) And then there was me, the little urchin child who used to play in the creek behind the house by herself and eat wild onions until she threw up. Of course, now that I know how hard physicians have it, I’m glad I became an online editor instead. That’s where the big bucks are.
A new survey conducted by the Texas Medical Association found that 45 percent of its members would limit how many Medicaid patients they would treat if Medicaid fees were cut by 1 or 2 percent, and another 24 percent said they would stop accepting Medicaid patients altogether. Just a refresher—Medicaid covers low-income families and is a joint federal-state program. I know this because I once worked in HHS at the Appropriations Committee where I was forced to look up Medicaid in the dictionary (yes, it was a long time ago).
So clearly if you’re a physician who only makes like $300K a year and you’re scraping by as it is, the one percent cut to providers that starts in September would be enough for you to stop treating the poor and downtrodden. I mean, seriously. What did you get into this business for? To heal the sick? OK, fine. Doctors should be adequately reimbursed for their time. Then maybe they’ll have enough money to buy magazines other than “Highlights.” By the way, has TMA come out with an endorsement in the governor’s race yet? Because Rick Perry is forcing state agencies to trim their budgets by 10 percent. Maybe you should put that on your agenda and smoke it.
More than three million Texans are covered by Medicaid but only 15,000 of the state’s 48,000 physicians accept them. And you think getting an appointment is hard. My arm could be falling off and my general practitioner would tell me to take Tylenol. Tom Banning, CEO of Texas Academy of Family Physicians, says that Medicaid pays only 70 percent of what Medicare pays, so doctors would rather see old wrinkled people than poor people. He added that doctors trying to stay in business “have tended to look at what is the lowest-paying part of the market, which is Medicaid. It’s not a hard economic decision.” Totally! Why waste your time on the needy? You’ve got pharmaceutical company-sponsored vacations to go on!
How hard do doctors work anyway? In my experience, you’re lucky to have five minutes of face time with your doctor after waiting three hours. And forget stopping by their house unannounced. They hate that. Let’s all boycott doctors until they agree to see poor people. I’ve got ibuprofen in my purse and some bullshit homeopathic pellets at home. We’ll be fine.
[DMN]
