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StumbleDoctors: Medicaid cuts will decrease access for Nevada’s poor
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 | 12:51 p.m.
Sun Coverage
CARSON CITY – A parade of Las Vegas anesthesiologists testified Tuesday that cutting their Medicaid rates would mean less service to poor and severely ill patients.
Dr. Jonathan Zucker told the televised public hearing that the 45 percent proposed reduction approved by the Nevada Legislature will mean “decreased access to Medicaid enrollees.”
Dr. Elliot Klain said the $37 rate per 15 minute unit hasn't been increased since being set in 1980, yet the cost of doing business has risen. And now it is going down to $21.
“Medicaid is a charity rate,” Klain said. “We can’t give that much charity to the state.”
There are an estimated 242,000 people enrolled in Medicaid in Nevada.
Dr. Charles Mason told the hearing that Gov. Jim Gibbons proposed cutting government by 10 percent. But anesthesiologists have been hit with a reduction of more than 45 percent.
“I’m not sure how well the Legislature was informed,” Mason told a reporter after the hearing.
Charles Duarte, director of the state Division of Health Care Financing and Policy, says the reduction was ordered by the Legislature and it will be effective March 15 if the federal government approves the cutback. The federal government contributes to the program.
Duarte warned there “will be further cuts in the next budget unless a miracle happens” with the looming $3 billion shortfall in state revenue.
Duarte said the division initially proposed to cut dentures, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, audiology, hearing aids, treatment for traumatic brain-injured individuals and home-based community care services.
These services were being eliminated until the Legislature reconsidered those, Durate said. Other groups such as hospitals, doctors and personal care attendants have had their rates reduced previously for treatment of Medicaid patients.
The public hearing was conducted by Durate’s division and attracted a large number of anesthesiologists from Las Vegas. The Legislature reduced the Medicaid budget by $2.9 million with cuts in anesthesiologist rates and other services.
Larry Matheis, director of the Nevada State Medical Association, said “access will be more difficult” for Medicaid patients if these rates are reduced.
Zucker said in a letter to the state that “anesthesia providers in Nevada will become so disenchanted with providing 24/7 services to Medicaid enrollees under such bitterly austere conditions, they will inevitably decline to participate in the Medicaid program.”
Duarte told the hearing that Nevada was not the only state reducing Medicaid services. He said Arizona is now paying in IOUs. California is giving up all optional services and Hawaii is unable to pay for the services.
“We’re dealing with a cash situation,” Duarte said. And the elimination of services proposed earlier will be “back on the table” in preparing for the budget to be presented to the 2011 Legislature.
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Give the people in need the money on a debt card and allow them to buy the services or insurance they need. That way the people in need become empowered over their own lives and well help work to lower costs by getting doctors to serve their needs rather than the needs of insurance companies or politicians.
Are they really cutting Emergency Room back to four days a week?????
Patrick. You know as well as I do if you give them that money for healthcare it's going to go to booze, cigarettes and hydrocodone. Give them a voucher and it will be traded for cash, or a similar amount of booze, cigarettes and hydrocodone. At least now they get the care at one time or another. The bad part is we just get the bill.
Eliminate the freebie altogether. It's better to give a man a fishing pole and bait, than to give him a free fish dinner from Long John's.
Burger King has a very good catfish sandwich.
Is it the Hippocratic or Hypocritic Oath?
P.S
How many anesthesiologists are on welfare?
Read here about Sue Lowden's history of illegally cutting health benefits.
http://www.harryreid.com/ee/index.php/ne...
How can a housewife "illegally cut health benefits" to the general public?
Part 2 of 2
What do people on Medicaid do when HPN doctors refuse to answer their phones or refuse to see new patients?
The Medicaid patients go to the emergency room. That means your and my tax dollars (from real estate and sales taxes) go to pay emergency room prices for medical services which HPN is supposed to be providing at a fixed cost to our state.
Months ago, my grandson's AETNA HMO pediatrician's office repeatedly failed to answer its telephone one afternoon, when my grandson was violently sick to his stomach, had D and was screaming with double ear aches. We thought he had Swine Flu. Finally, I got sick of dialing the pediatrician every ten minutes. So I took my grandson to St. Martin's Emergency Room.
(We don't go to UMC Quick Care because they are incompetent quacks, but that's another story.)
Services provided by St. Martin's Emergency Room? No more than 10 minutes with the doctor, and some blood tests processed within a two hour period. The price charged by St. Martin's for this service was $1500 and several hundred dollars for the doctor.
The huge cost of emergency room service to Medicaid patients is going to bankrupt Nevada, because at least one of Nevada's Medicaid HMO's and its doctor providers are playing the games described above. Is their game playing justifiable because they haven't been paid? I don't know.
The hidden problems with the Medicaid HMO's needs to be paid attention to and be fixed, immediately.
Part 1 of 2
A "not reported" news story concerning Medicaid in Nevada:
We have 20% unemployment in Nevada, when you count people who have been denied unemployment or their unemployment has run out.
When that 20% of our population applies for Medicaid, they are told they must choose between just a few "Medicaid HMOs". One is Health Plan of Nevada.
Last week I spoke to a pregnant woman who had been laid off. Medicaid took her as a patient. She picked HPN. She has chicken pox and needs to have the condition treated. The primary care doctor to whom HPN assigned her wouldn't answer his phone, for days. His office is shut.
She phoned HPN and they gave her names of 3 other HPN general practitioners.
The woman phoned the 3 doctors, and their receptionists said that the doctors were refusing to take any more HPN Medicaid patients because HPN was not promptly paying them.
I understand, completely, what is going on because I watched the bankruptcy of the California HMO "Maxicare" many years ago.
What happens is that an HMO has cash flow problems, so it repeatedly delays paying hospital bills and its doctor-contractors in a prompt way, or not at all. The HMO with cash flow problems also doesn't pay medical and x-ray labs and the like.
All the while the patients of that insolvent HMO "Maxicare" were clueless as to why they were getting jerked around by their medical provider, and why they were getting collection phone calls for covered hospital bills.
The bottom line with HPN-enrolled physicians' game playing NOW, in refusing to accept new HPN Medicaid patients, is symptomatic that HPN is not promptly paying them.
In turn, HPN's problems with its Medicaid HMO program is symptomatic of the State of Nevada not promptly paying HPN for the agree-upon Medicaid HMO patient premiums.
No problem...every one will be so numb about the real costs to Obamacare we won't need Anesthesiologist.
Look at Senator Reids wife. Sorry she got into that accident but she got her surgery cause she had insurance where as I had to wait 9 months for the same surgery. Docs considered it in both cases as ellective and wanted their cash up front. I don't see how not being able to move your arms and being in extreme pain as being elective. Hospitals stated that it wasn't an emergency. Meaning I wasn't going to die if I couldn't move my arms. Drunk driver in this case never got arrested for leaving the scean of the accident either. Can I run for State representative????
It seems like Obama, Reid, and others think that doctors are blue collar workers that are not capable of other careers. If they aren't paid well for their services, they are intelligent people and will switch to different careers as professors, researchers, etc.
most doctors don't care about heath care for anyone, it's the almighty dollar. hypocrite oath they live under, not the one they graduated with. been to a doctors office lately, so many signs saying i don't take this, that, pay immediatly, my god you can't even see receptionist thru all their signs.
Doctors need payment. Doctors have to eat. It's that simple. If the deadbeats and Marxist-Democrats who-don't-work would morph into achievers and risk-takers and make some real money, doctors wouldn't overwhelm their prospective patients with "pay me" signs.
This government takeover of health care will affect 100% of Americans -- born and unborn -- for generations to come. Obama and Pelosi have intentionally deceived the American people about taxpayer-funding of abortion. It is a fact that this bill authorizes an unprecedented, profound and alarming increase of tax money for other people's abortions -- the largest increase of government-funded abortion since Roe v. Wade. Is this what you want? To add insult to injury, Pelosi now wants to rewrite the Constitution and pass the bill without a vote! It's a travesty for the House of Representatives to cowardly shirk its responsibilities and pretend to vote on an unprecedented and unconstitutional proposal -- the so-called "Slaughter Rule." Even liberals are cautioning against the use of 'deeming' (or the Slaughter Rule) as a legislative strategy. George Washington Law School professor Alan Morrison, a litigator for the liberal group Public Citizen, is opposed to using the Slaughter Rule. He has stated: "If I were advising somebody [on the Slaughter Solution], I would say to them, 'Don't do it.' "What does 'deem' mean? In class, I always say it means 'let's pretend.' 'Deem' means it's not true."
HOAX and CHAINS
The HC bill if passed will decrease doctor access for everyone, not just the poor.
It's pathetic that people believe Obama cares about them. Obama only cares about Obama. A doctor cares more about his patients than an arrogant politician ever will.