House Bill Effects on Physician Income

I had a piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today on physician support of health reform.

A sadistic friend posted it on Sermo. Weee!

The subject of the effect on physician income came up on our Doctors for America and I said:

I often ask my colleagues who 1.) complain about Medicare rates and 2) say all care for the uninsured should be via charity by physicians , "Wouldn't you rather get paid a bit less and have everyone covered so you have more paying patients?"

I doubt anyone has done an analysis of what the net effect of this would be, but perhaps the net effect would be neutral or positive, I don't know. BUT as the NEJM survey said, most of us find it acceptable to take lower reimbursements if everyone is covered.

Our terrific Media Mogul, Mandy Krauthammer-Cohen, MD, of course, had a great bit of information:

Some additional food for thought. If you look at the Lewin group analysis....which does have a conservative bias given it is owned by United Health...physicians will actually make more money under health reform with a public option.

Testimony by Lewin states: "In the first year of the program (when public option is only opened to small businesses with less than 10 employees), physician income would increase by $10.9 billion. This reflects the reduction in uncompensated care for uninsured people as well as increased health services utilization for newly insured people. It also reflects the House bill provisions that would increase Medicaid reimbursement for primary care services to Medicare payment levels. Thus, the reductions in payment for people who shift to the public plan are outweighed by increases in reimbursement for Medicaid, reductions in uncompensated care and revenues from increased service use for newly insured people. Average net-income per physician wouldincrease by $15,237 in 2010 under this scenario."

Read the whole testimony here.

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