Most of the present force of doctors will have their work load increased and their pay cut.... significantly. Not much of an incentive for young people to become doctors in the future.
Em...NO...that will not happen. More Doctors will simply refuse to accept Medi-care-caide. I know many groups right now who simply don't accept any sort of government payment. I know of other groups that do not accept ANY form of health insurance whatsoever. Cash pay with no cash discount or don't even bother calling for an appointment.
Pulled this off a medical billing forum, fwiw. I always recommend charging 10% higher per procedure code on the insurance carrier that pays you the most for that procedure code. Example: BCBS will pay Doctor A $95.00 on a procedure Aetna will pay Doctor A $75.00 on same procedure UHC will pay $101.00 on same procedure Medicare will pay $62.00 on same procedure Take UHC's allowable and times by .10% and that should be your charge for the procedure. Each procedure code may get paid higher by a different insurance carrier. Your contractual adjustments will be high but this will ensure you get paid every 100% allowed for your charge.
"cured" of what Diabetes? Heart Disease? how about a dibitating Stroke from decades of High BP. Cancer? How much would you pay to live?
When the government gets involved in setting the pay for a procedure, pay will likely come down. I hear that even currently some government-type insurance pays only $.30/$1.00.
Why should there be any discount at all per procedure? You don't pay 15 cents on the dollar for dish washing liquid....or 8 cents on the dollar for a piece of Pizza?
Most, if not all, of those conditions are easily preventable.....if DRs would do the right things and/or educate their patients they would not happen in the first place. As for cancer, why should a DR get paid $1 million a month to treat someone who dies when the DR knew the patient was terminal before treatment was even started? If DRs did what is known to be right.....most people would never get sick. How often does your dog get sick? twice in its lifetime...maybe? DRs do more to make people sick than they do to make them healthy....because they are paid more when people are on the edge of death for twenty years than they do when they are healthy.