is the low reimbursement rates. I have a few years until I'm eligible for Medicare, but my doctor recently stopped taking new Medicare patients, and no longer accepts assignment for his existing Medicare patients. That can be quite an additional cost for Medicare patients that stay with him.

According to the excerpt in the OP, seniors know that Medicare "will be accepted by almost every health care provider...." My understanding is that acceptance is already below that standard and is still dropping.

we made medicare universal and gutted the private healthcare industry.

to gut the private healthcare industry. Medical practices are still going to be private entities.

and they'll being doing business with Medicare of competing to provide concierge services for a few very wealthy people.

considerably more for the same visit. And Medicare pays. That doesn't seem so much like low disbursement to me.

It depends on what's being done as to whether or not that is low. If it's costing the doctor $340 to provide the service, then $350 is low.

I know that I was listening to a spokeswoman for Virginia Hospital Center a couple of years ago, and she said that they lost money on every single Medicare patient they treated, so they had to charge other insured patients more to make up for it.

how well the meds are working and whether any further symtoms have mafe their appearance yet hardly justifies that kind of fee.

The total charge for an office visit should be around $70, and you would only be responsible for 20% of that. If he's charging $350 for just an office visit, sounds like he's ripping off Medicare and you.

He is going to change doctor. There is still lots of fraud and unnecessary cost occurring in Medicare and those could be changed to payments to doctors and healthcare workers. This does not make Medicare a bad program.

Still pretty small, but growing.

The so-called "best and brightest" seem to be repugnant money grubbers.

I've also heard that the AMA limits the number of graduates to boost the salaries of doctors. Is that true?

but it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

It isn't just AMA. Same for the dentists, any licensed professional.

Sure, they say they want to make sure that their members are properly trained and regulated. However, they don't like to be called out on regulation or auditing of how well they (the organization) or their members are doing.

They are mainly in it to make some bucks (a lot) and to prevent the governments from getting into the act. Of course the governments may not have the resources (need to hire medical professionals to police medical professionals), but the real reason is that the government _may_ be impartial.

This is another reason that the AMA (and others) rail against legal actions against their members. Too much open air and scrutiny is never a good thing. Hear them scream about tort reform and legal insurance. Bet they can't/won't put up the real figures on malpractice by all doctors/hospitals vs. malpractice cases brought and won.

The USofA is a totally broken system afa health care. Licensed plumbers, I don't know.

Fine. F em. Medicare for all!!

when my grandmother was rapidly approaching the need for nursing home care. Nobody in the family had the means to provide care or the room to take her in. Medicare passed, and soon my Bubie was residing in a good nursing home.. my mother visited daily after work, and the rest of the family at least once a week. The burden had been lifted.

and it used to be only a few weeks.

But Medicaid will pay the bills after a nursing home patient runs out of personal funds.

and Medicare paid for most of my grandmother's care.She died in 1969.

and, on edit, I guess it was Medicaid, which was passed before Medicare.. My husband just corrected me.. oops.

I always thought a good chunk of it was serving the interests of their corporate sponsors in the private insurance industry.