As one of the experts interviewed in this piece from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune notes, it is not surprising that this is happening — it is only surprising that it’s being said out loud by the Mayo Clinic’s CEO:
Mayo Clinic’s chief executive made a startling announcement in a recent speech to employees: The Rochester-based health system will give preference to patients with private insurance over those with lower-paying Medicaid or Medicare coverage, if they seek care at the same time and have comparable conditions.
Mayo will continue to take Medicaid patients. But for this world-renowned facility to survive and serve those patients, it needs to treat more people who can pay. And the government, despite the massive, unsustainable expense of the Medicaid and Medicare programs, just doesn’t pay enough, and in some cases delays payment long enough that it’s a serious problem for someone trying to keep a practice or facility afloat.
In fact, in many areas of medicine, the privately insured actually have to pay more in order to make up for the losses that medical providers incur in treating Medicare and especially Medicaid patients. This increases both costs and private insurance premiums. And the massive expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare has only made this problem more acute. To take Medicaid patients, in some specialties, is essentially an act of charity, because the program doesn’t cover the cost of providing care. In Mayo’s case, the program only pays between 50 and 85 percent of the cost of providing care.
Even before Obamacare, an increasing number of doctors simply refused to take new Medicaid patients. It’s not because they’re mean or hate poor people. It’s because in addition to having families to feed, doctors and surgeons also have office rents, employee salaries and malpractice insurance premiums to pay, not to mention loans from medical school. Without meeting those expenses, they cannot continue to operate at all.
Mayo Clinic faces similar expenses and pressures, plus the costs of maintaining and purchasing expensive medical equipment, as well as maintenance on their facilities and sometimes expansion.
And that’s why Mayo is doing this, even if some people will believe, in their ignorance, that it’s cruel or heartless. It helps illustrate how merely throwing millions of additional able-bodied, childless adults onto Medicaid can worsen the quality of care for those who were on the program before. Even if it nominally reduces the uninsured rate, it means that those previously eligible — poor people who are disabled or have children — will have a harder time getting the care they need.
