Quote:Because once you're on the dole it's nearly impossible to get you to give it up?

 

Medicare is not financially viable for health care providers that's why physicians close their panels to Medicare patients when they reach a threshold of around 40%. Those physicians with a high percentage of Medicare patients are those who are either closing, selling, or retiring; sometimes all three. Commercial insurance contracts are what keep your doctor going, those reliant on Medicare/Medicaid as their primary source of funding are the least financially stable in the industry. But that's what happens when the payer can arbitrarily reduce your reimbursement on the whim of the 535 morons in Congress.

It will never cease to astound me how conservatives vilify the poor for "being on the dole" and in the same breath defend the elderly on medicare, SS or w/e. Might be the first time I've heard someone refer to it the same way as they would the poor, most likely because the elderly is the conservative base.

 

One has to wonder that if the private insurance industry was not the primary source of funds for doctors etc... Would medicare be able to cover doctors more sufficiently?

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