| > Medicare reimbursement levels are sufficient to support most medical practices. Big Nope. Most practices have fairly fixed costs: Medical malpractice Facilities rent, or mortgage Front office IT & EMR Privileging/Credentialing Practice CME/required education The only highly variable cost is physician compensation, and considering the limited availability, this will merely cause the retirements and limited access to specialists. Perhaps you have some evidence to support your extraordinary claim? I'll provide evidence to the contrary, based on Hospitals and practices refusing to accepting Medicaid [1] patients, or, not accepting/limiting medicare patients[2], [3], [4] The simple fact is, there is a limited supply of physicians, and many of them don't want to practice the higher volume, 5 minutes per patient, 5 minutes for notes x 12 hours a day type of practice. Not only is the higher volume more dangerous for the patient, it is also more risky for the medical provider, both in terms of quality of life, and also, the risk of an error, or inadequate information exchange. [1] https://www.reliasmedia.com/articles/147019-when-hospitals-r... [2] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/10021... [3] https://www.verywellhealth.com/doctors-accept-medicare-insur... [4] https://www.hlc.org/news/more-physicians-no-longer-seeing-me... |
If the AMA isn't going to fix the physician and residency pipeline, could we not offer visas to physician immigrants who meet first world medical credentialing standards to deepen the supply and therefore support demand? If supply is the issue, we should fix the supple, not destroy necessary demand.