A recent “study” by Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins is entitled “Doctors Likely to accept New Medicaid Patients as Coverage Expands.” (I may or may not have belly laughed when I read that title). See my blog “Medicaid Expansion: Bad for the Poor.”
The beginning of the article reads, “The upcoming expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) won’t lead physicians to reduce the number of new Medicaid patients they accept, suggests a study in the November issue of Medical Care, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.”
The study was published October 16, 2013. (BTW: From what I can discern from the article, the title actually means that physicians will be forced to accept more Medicaid patients because there will not be additional physicians accepting Medicaid). Odd title.
According to this study, the ACA will not cause doctors to reduce the number of Medicaid patients. What does this study NOT say? Nothing indicates that the ACA, which will allow millions more of Americans to become eligible for Medicaid, will cause MORE physicians to accept Medicaid. Nor does the study state that the ACA will cause physicians to accept MORE Medicaid recipients.
Am I the only person who understands supply and demand?
Anyone remember the 1999 Toys.R.Us.com debacle? On-line shopping was just heating up. I was in law school, and I, as well as millions of others, ordered Christmas presents on-line from Toys R Us. I ordered a bunch of Pokemon trading cards for a nephew…remember those? Me either…I just bought them for my nephew. Toys R Us promised delivery by December 10th.
Toys R Us was, apparently, a very popular store that year, because Toys R Us is unable to package and ship orders in time to meet the December 10th deadline. Nor could Toys R Us meet the deadline of Christmas. Employees were working through the weekends. About two days before Christmas, and just in time to create last-minute havoc during Christmas time, Toys R Us sends out thousands of emails saying, “We’re sorry.”
Obviously, Toys R Us was slammed by the media, and thousands of consumers were highly ticked off…including me.
I had to go to the mall (a place to which I detest going) on Christmas Eve (the worst day to shop of the entire year, except Black Friday, which I also avoid) to get my nephew a present.
Toys R Us learned its lesson. It outsourced its shipping to Amazon.com, which, obviously, has the whole shipping thing down pat.
Hypothetical:
50 million people are currently eligible for (and receive) Medicaid services (these numbers are purely fictional, as I do not know the real numbers…I basically estimated 1 million per state, which, I am sure, is an underestimation). Say there are 3.5 million physicians that accept Medicaid (70,000/state, which is probably a high estimation, when we are considering only physicians and not health care providers, generally).
Our hypothetical yields 14.28 Medicaid recipients per physician. Or a ratio of 14.28:1.
Media state that, if NC expanded Medicaid, that 587,000 more North Carolinians would be eligible for Medicaid if NC expanded Medicaid.
Using NC as a state average, 29.35 million more people would be eligible for Medicaid if all states expanded Medicaid (obviously not all states are expanding Medicaid, but, in my hypothetical, all states are expanding Medicaid). This equals a total of 79.35 million people in America on Medicaid.
But….no additional physicians….
Because, remember, according to the Lippincott study, the upcoming expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) won’t lead physicians to reduce the number of new Medicaid patients they accept. But the ACA does not lead more physicians to accept Medicaid or physicians to accept more Medicaid patients.
This brings the ratio to 22.67:1. 8 1/2 new patients per one physican…and, BTW, that one physician may not be accepting new Medicaid patients or may not have the capacity to accept more Medicaid patients. It’s a Toys R Us disaster!!! No one is getting their Pokemon trading cards!!!
Why not? Why won’t the ACA lead more physicians to accept Medicaid? Why won’t the ACA lead physicians to accept more Medicaid recipients?
Didn’t the ACA INCREASE Medicaid reimbursement rates? Wouldn’t higher reimbursement rates lead more physicians to accept Medicaid and physicians to accept more Medicaid recipients??? I mean, didn’t you hear Obama tout that Medicaid rates would be increased to Medicare rates? I know I did.
One average, Medicaid pays approximately 66% of Medicare reimbursement rates. Obviously, every state differs as to the Medicaid reimbursement rate.
The ACA, however, slashes the Medicare budget by 716 million from 2013 to 2022. The cuts are across-the-board changes in Medicare reimbursement formulas for a variety of Medicare providers, including hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, and hospice agencies. Furthermore, the ACA creates the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which is intended to determine additional Medicare reimbursement rate cuts. IPAB will be creating a new Medicare spending target; it will be comprised of 15 unelected bureaucrats. The board will be able to make suggestions to Congress to reign in Medicare spending, and one of the biggest tools the IPAB has is cutting physician reimbursement rates.
It’s the old smoke and mirrors trick…We will raise Medicaid rates to Medicare rates…pssst, decrease the Medicare rate so we can meet our own promise!!
While I am extremely happy to hear that, at least according to the Lippincott study, the ACA will not lead physicians to reduce the number of Medicaid patients they accept, I am concerned that the ACA will not lead more physicians to accept Medicaid and physicians to accept more Medicaid recipients.
In fact, the study states that “[t]he data suggested that changes in Medicaid coverage did not significantly affect doctors’ acceptance of new Medicaid patients. “[P]hysicians who were already accepting (or not accepting) Medicaid patients before changes in Medicaid coverage rates continue to do so,” Drs Sabik and Gandhi write. I bet the Drs. did not ask, “Would you continue to accept Medicaid, if you knew that your practice would endure more audits, post-payment reviews, possible prepayment reviews, and, in general, suspensions of reimbursements if anyone alleges Medicaid fraud, irrespective of the truth?”
Which tells me…hello…more Medicaid recipients, not more doctors!! Even if the physicians already accepting Medicaid COULD accept additional Medicaid recipient patients, each physician only has a certain amount of capacity. To my knowledge, the ACA did not increase the number of hours in a day. Supply and demand, people!!
Where are my Pokemon cards???!!!
