Physician pay cuts are another threat to independent practices
By Admin | November 15, 2021
On Nov. 2, Medicare announced that surgeons will see a 9 percent cut in payment for medical services starting Jan. 1, 2022. Obviously, physicians aren’t excited about this, but these types of political decisions have enormous consequences for our entire healthcare system.
These types of cuts place external pressure on physicians and drive them into more hospital-employed practices. Physicians then become hospital employees. This gives hospitals control over physicians and physician care delivery. Simultaneously, hospitals are merging and consolidating around regional healthcare markets on an astounding basis.
All of this is creating rent-seeking crony-type monopolies over the delivery of healthcare. This destroys the potential for a free-choice healthcare marketplace and will not be a sustainable model for treating patients.
There will actually be a 9.75 percent cut, which comes from the combined effect of different policies. The expiration of the 2021 temporary 3.75 percent fix is being combined with the expiration of a temporary moratorium on the annual 2 percent Medicare sequester cut. This is in addition to a different 4 percent cut secondary to the “pay as you go” provisions of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act.
A collection of the country’s leading surgical societies, the Alliance of Specialty Medicine and the Surgical Care Coalition, recognize this downward pressure as impossible to maintain.
In fact, Medicare physician pay has increased only 11 percent from 2001-2020. Meanwhile, the cost of running a medical practice increased 39 percent from 2001-2020. Adjusting for inflation and the cost of running a practice, Medicare physician pay dropped 22 percent over...(More)
For more info please read, Physician pay cuts are another threat to independent practices, by TheHill
