Shrinking Supply of Medicare Doctors

More and more doctors are declining to accept Medicare patients. This has beena  problem for a long time, as I’ve alerted Retirement Watch readers. But it’s becoming worse as Congress reduces the payments to doctors and imposes new rules and restrictions. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday (subscription might be required) that a fairly small portion of doctors opt out of Medicare, but the number tripled last year. The bigger problem, as I’ve mentioned in the past, is that many doctors limit the number of Medicare patients they treat and a fair number aren’t accepting any new Medicare patients.

The best move is to establish your medical relationships before you are Medicare-eligible. What I’ve learned from many readers is that, especially in areas with a large percentage of Medicare-age people, it’s hard to find a new doctor. A lot of medical offices I’m told will tell a Medicare patient that if they don’t have an urgent need, they can’t get an appointment for three weeks or so. While it’s nice that Medicare will pay a lot of your doctors’ bills, it doesn’t do much good if you can’t get into see a doctor.

Even fewer doctors say they are accepting new Medicaid patients, and the number who don’t participate in private insurance contracts, while smaller, is growing—just as millions of Americans are poised to gain access to such coverage under the new health law next year. All told, health experts say the number of doctors going “off-grid” isn’t enough to undermine the Affordable Care Act, but they say some Americans may have difficulty finding doctors who will take their new benefits or face long waits for appointments with those who do.

CMS said 9,539 physicians who had accepted Medicare opted out of the program in 2012, up from 3,700 in 2009. That compares with 685,000 doctors who were enrolled as participating physicians in Medicare last year, according to CMS, which has never released annual opt-out figures before….

The pullback in Medicare acceptance is being felt in certain quarters. Joe Baker, president of the Medicare Rights Center, said his patient-advocacy group has had an increase in calls from seniors who can’t find doctors willing to treat them—mainly from affluent urban and suburban areas where many patients can pay out of pocket if their doctor doesn’t accept Medicare. “In most places, doctors can’t pick and choose because Medicare is the biggest game in town, or the only game in town,” he said.