Debating the merits of Politifact‘s recent choice for Lie of the Year with Washington Post colleague Jen Rubin, Greg Sargent tweeted:
Rubin responded:
Rubin is right about Medicare Part D, but Sargent’s definition does not fit the rest of Medicare either. Medicare in no way guarantees that any senior will get any medical care. To do that, Medicare would have to force doctors to see Medicare patients. Fortunately, Medicare does not do that … yet.
What Medicare does do, is once a senior has secured the services of a doctor, Medicare guarantees the federal government will pay that doctor. Problem is, Medicare already does not pay doctors enough money to guarantee that doctors will give seniors care. Just look at these headlines:
The New York Times, 4/1/2009, Finding a Doctor Who Accepts Medicare Isn’t Easy : “In a June 2008 report, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent federal panel that advises Congress on Medicare, said that 29 percent of the Medicare beneficiaries it surveyed who were looking for a primary care doctor had a problem finding one to treat them, up from 24 percent the year before.”
The Houston Chronicle, 5/18/2010, Texas doctors fleeing Medicare in droves: “Two years after a survey found nearly half of Texas doctors weren’t taking some new Medicare patients, new data shows 100 to 200 a year are now ending all involvement with the program.”
USA Today, 6/21/2010, Doctors limit new Medicare patients: “The American Medical Association says 17% of more than 9,000 doctors surveyed restrict the number of Medicare patients in their practice. Among primary care physicians, the rate is 31%. The federal health insurance program for seniors paid doctors on average 78% of what private insurers paid in 2008.”
The gap between what the current Medicare system is (guranteed payment for doctors) and what liberals like Sargent think it is (guranteed health care for seniors), is large and growing.
