Is Alaska a Bellwether for the Country?
In Anchorage, however, fewer than three out of every four doctors accepts Medicare patients and only 13 percent of Anchorage primary care physicians accept new Medicare patients.
In 2009, Medicare paid doctors in Anchorage $118 for a new patient, 30 minute visit. This is 39 percent less than private insurance companies pay doctors in Anchorage ($187).
Who will see new Medicare patients in Anchorage? The answer is safety net providers.
Research summary by Rosyland Frazier and Mark Foster. HT: Jason Shafrin.
From what it sounds like, the wait for people seeing a doctor is going to get worse and worse.
Alaska pays doctors and dentists to work part time (a few months at a time) to treat some of their residents. How would you like to live in Nome, Alaska and when you asked someone… “I cannot find a doctor… Who do you go to?”
They might say… “I see Dr. Smith. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas except when he spends one week each month here. Call his office but his schedule is booked two years in advance.”
Makes it a little more difficult to pay off those student loans when you receive 39% less for your services. I wonder if we’ll see an increase in doctors over the next 10 years? My guess is no way!
To offer better healthcare medicare needs to pay more. If the government can’t pay more then something needs to be changed.
Yes, I think it is a bellwether for the rest of the country.
As specialists fees are cut also the markets for doctors will distort. New doctors will gravitate to fields that medicare pays more to.
Private, for cash medicine will not be permitted to continue. Romneycare is already moving that way and so it will go nationally. Older docs like myself will quit if they can afford the move. Younger students if they objectively look at all the pros and cons will reconsider going to medical school and having education debt of 200-300K or greater. That leaves the current crop of docs 35-50 to shoulder the brunt of the demand. We are already short of docs. It will only get worse.