Those who believe that we can have our cake and eat it, too, and maintain the healthcare system more or less as it is and reduce costs at the same time are engaging in wishful thinking. The empire is already striking back:
Heart specialists on Monday filed suit against Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius in an effort to stave off steep Medicare fee cuts for routine office-based procedures such as nuclear stress tests and echocardiograms.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, charges that the government’s planned cutbacks will deal a major blow to medical care in the USA, forcing thousands of cardiologists to shutter their offices, sell diagnostic equipment and work for hospitals, which charge more for the same procedures.
“What they’ve done is basically killed the private practice of cardiology,” says Jack Lewin, CEO of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), which represents 90% of the roughly 40,000 heart specialists in the USA.
Physicians won’t take a pay cut voluntarily and, given a choice which do you think that legislators will do? Eschew the reimbursement cuts or “kill the private practice of cardiology”? My guess is the former. Elders vote and the AMA lobbies and donates to political campaigns.
This smells like use of the court systems to draw attention to an issue for political/legislative purposes.
That’s how it looks to me. It’ll probably work, too.
Just remember that breaking even means making an expected income. I do not see how we avoid cutting back some on specialist salaries. Without looking at all of the specifics, I would suspect that some of this is aimed at the ability of some specialties, cardiologists among them, to self refer for procedures. This will be presented as a patient care issue, but will mostly be about the money.
Steve