November 05, 2007

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced last week a final rule that will reduce Medicare physician reimbursements by 10.1% on Jan. 1, 2008, unless Congress acts to reverse the reductions, as reported by Congressional Quarterly HealthBeat (November 2). Under the rule, Medicare will pay $58.9 billion to about 900,000 physicians in 2008. CMS officials said that the agency "has no choice but to implement" the rule under current law.

And so just as with Medicaid, the single-payer squeeze on the providers now proceeds apace under Medicare, as politicians and bureaucrats respond to their powerful incentives to reduce budget expenditures at the expense of patients. The longer-run effect of this process is not difficult to predict: Physicians will retire earlier than otherwise would have been the case, fewer will enter medical school and generalized practice, more foreign and fewer experienced doctors will come to characterize medical practice; in short, quality will suffer. Medicare beneficiaries will find it increasingly difficult to find physicians willing to serve them. And so yet again we will come to experience the fruits of government compassion.

Posted by Benjamin Zycher at November 5, 2007 06:03 PM

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