A new report finds that 11% of Alaskan doctors have opted out of the Medicare system, but will still see patients who agree to pay the fees they charge. As Jason Shafrin explains:
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.
The reason why docs are refusing to see Medicare patients is that Medicare reimbursement is not sufficiently large to incentivize physicians to accept Medicare patients. This is despite the fact that payments to doctors in Alaska are relatively high compared to Medicare payments in the rest of the nation.
I’ve heard that they don’t have concierge doctors in Alaska. Does anyone know if that’s true?
Alaska has a doctor shortage so it has to be aggressive to get doctors to practice in the state. According to data from Kaiser, Alaska pays Medicaid physician fees that are actually higher than what private insurers pay. But the state has no control over the rates the federal government pays to doctors that treat Medicare physicians.
That’s not good news for people who live in extremely rural areas! I visited Skagway,AK (site of the Klondike Gold Rush) this summer and found out that they didn’t even have a sinlge doctor! Rather, they have Physician Assistants (ironic name). Sure would sbe mighty inconvenient if your primary care doctor didn’t accept your form of payment. I think it’s accurate to say that Medicare is broke!
I’d imagine it can be hard to pull professionals of many different trades to rural places such as Alaska, especially when there is very little monetary incentive for them to practice.
On top of this Medicare does not allow patients to pay with their own money on top of medicare’s share.
“This is despite the fact that payments to doctors in Alaska are relatively high compared to Medicare payments in the rest of the nation.”
Payments are high because there are so few doctors, but with only 13% accepting new patients it obviously is not high enough.
Another one of those inconvenient truths then? They’re starting to pile up..
@ Jeff
I have also heard the same thing, and so far I haven’t found any research study or any source of information that shows otherwise. Can you blame them? With no incentives to offer their services in Alaska, of course physicians are going to run somewhere else…
those that do accept medicare patients would probably have to provide lesser quality services to make up for the costs
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