Less Docs Treating Medicaid Patients
We recently posted a blog on this site about the insanely low reimbursements of Medicaid. Now for some more obvious news. A new government report found that more than half of the physicians across the country who supposedly treat Medicaid patients don’t actually do so. Yup, the numbers are a scam:
According to a report prepared by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 43% of providers listed by MCOs as accepting Medicaid patients either were not practicing at the location where they were listed or were not participating in the MCO, and another 8% were not accepting new patients enrolled in the plan.
So, is this is a surprise to anyone? Expand Medicaid at your peril because there is no one there to treat these patients.
As it turns out, Medicaid patients have fewer doctors to chose from, but receive comparable care compared to others with employer based health insurance such as Blue Cross. Look not at physician participation rates (no insurer including the Blues) have anything close to 100% physician participation. But Medicaid patients have almost exactly the same number of doctor visits per year as do those with Blue Cross — but not necessarily the same doctors, of course.
I can attest to this. Every month or so I receive a fantasy letter from a Blue Cross subsidiary listing about 50 or so “patients” enrolled through the ACA that have me as their PCP. Some from 90 miles away. I have never met these “patients” nor have I ever agreed to become their PCP. This list arrives without a name or phone number to contact, so I cannot question or correct this. As far as some bureaucrat is concerned, these patients are “covered”.
I don’t think someone can proudly identify themselves as a “capitalist,” any more than they can be a “gravitist” with belief in gravity. It’s just a set of rules in which social interactions generally take place.
That being said, there is no theory to capitalism beyond what is learned in grammar school. Individual transactions involve two partners setting the value of something to be exchanged. If they do not reach a common value, the exchange does not take place.
Although much of socialism is nifty, it suffers the painful fact that it doesn’t work efficiently in reality. Unless a centrally-determined price exactly matches ALL values assessed by ALL trading partners, it creates imbalance. In half the cases, the seller benefits unduly; in the other, the buyer.
In the Middle East, in the souk, the marketplace, the traders are woefully shocked by the American method, if they come to learn of it. A fixed price for something? Such thing can only be attempted with factory products, large-scale identical units with a fixed wholesale price. The value of an oriental rug is what they buyer will pay for it, if the seller will sell it for that price.
Underpricing causes shortage; overpricing causes oversupply. There is no way around it. If the marble truck overturns in front of the elementary school, the price of marbles tanks – due to the cruel selfishness of the children, the fellow who’s been collecting marbles takes a beating on the value of his collection.
We have to deal with the question of which one is MORE unfair – oversupply or shortage, versus the fluctuation of price. Many who believe in the equity of socialism turn to beating the suppliers for being greedy, and demand that the price be lowered – it is an inevitable trend where the number of consumers outnumbers the number of suppliers.
Revolution inevitably leads to shortages – and shortages, to punishment of the “counterrevolutionaries.” That is SO twentieth century, why do we want to do it again?