Hey, Doc! I'm Old. Let Me In!

Medicare patients, you'd better line up a vet.  And not for your dog.

The Washington Wizards--the ones not playing basketball but just as bad--couldn't get their Congressional act together to stop a previously legislated 21% chainsaw cut in the reimbursement Medicare pays physicians. 

First, while it is true all doctors drive cars named Mercedes or Porsche, they barely get enough from Medicare patients to cover their fees for malpractice lawyers, who drive Lamborghini's and Bentley's.

Second, why was a 21% cut passed in the first place, since everyone knew doctors wouldn't see old people for half the cost of a decent haircut.?

Thirdly, can't we fire all the doctors?

The last being first, our doctors are not Rhode Island teachers, for God's sake.

The second is easy, too.  Nobody wants a doctor who drives a Yaris.  What medical school in Haiti produces a Yaris-driving oncologist?  I hope my Medicare cardiac surgeon--if there are any left when I can use them--drives a really expensive car and has two more sitting in the five car garage in his beach house.

The first, and last, question requires you up your cynicism dosage by the 48% you pay on your credit card now.  Congress does this all the time.  They pass a law that "pays for itself" by pretending to cut future expenses, like Medicare reimbursements, knowing full well that they will kill that cut before it actually goes into effect.  That way, our leaders can claim to keep budget deficits down under a trillion or so for the next ten years:  "Saving $800 Million Dollars in Medicare alone!"  They have no intention of actually allowing that savings to happen and, before TBO can find twenty red-white-and blue pens, their staff starts scheduling legislation for next year to reverse the savings.

Goldman Sachs and their Greek clients would be proud.

But something went wrong this year.  The Republicans and the Democrats in Congress just couldn't get to it.  They were too busy reforming health care and letting an ex-pitcher named Bunning strike out a few million unemployed with just his change-up. 

Nobody expected the whole 21% to stick.  Congress always changes the number.  Not in 2010 they didn't.  So, the doctors are extra pissed off.  Since they can't do just 79% of a liver transplant or a hip replacement, they are going to take fewer Medicare patients.  How you can make out taking both less money per patient and fewer patients, I don't know, but that is the plan.  Doctors have to be highly intelligent, but not really business smart.

Perhaps, the doctors figure that The Big O will at least squeeze Nancy and Harry enough to produce a law to make everybody, even twenty-somethings as immortal as I used to be, get a doctor and pay for health care they don't need.  And at a decent, insurance-inflated price.  The docs may be right.

But that Pelosi-Reid Health Sort-of-Reform Act of 2010 will probably include a mandated 48% cut in insurance payments to doctors in 2011.  It has to pay for itself, right?