A Sign of Things to Come – Mayo Clinic Drops Arizona Medicare Patients

Oh, it’s a Happy New Year! Unless, that is, you happen to be a Medicare patient of the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. In that case, I offer my sympathy.

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) — The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.

More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.

You see, the Mayo Clinic loses hundreds of millions of dollars a year treating Mediare patients. As more baby boomers retire, expect the situation to get worse, even without the wicked health care bill those fiends in the Senate managed to cobble together. But, the Mayo Clinic isn’t saying they won’t treat Medicare patients anymore, only that those patients will have to pay cash.

A Medicare patient who chooses to stay at Mayo’s Glendale clinic will pay about $1,500 a year for an annual physical and three other doctor visits, according to an October letter from the facility. Each patient also will be assessed a $250 annual administrative fee, according to the letter. Medicare patients at the Glendale clinic won’t be allowed to switch to a primary care doctor at another Mayo facility.

A few hundred of the clinic’s Medicare patients have decided to pay cash to continue seeing their primary care doctors, Yardley said. Mayo is helping other patients find new physicians who will accept Medicare.

Hmm, the politicians shoudl do something about that. It isn’t fair that someone who can spare $1500 a year, plus the surcharge should receive care, while their less fortunate neighbors can’t. But I digress.

If you’re a Medicare patient outside of Arizona, it should be okay, right? Well, um, maybe not.

Mayo will assess the financial effect of the decision in Glendale to drop Medicare patients “to see if it could have implications beyond Arizona,” he said.

Okay, but that’s just the Mayo Clinic. There are plenty of other providers out there who accept Medicare, right? Well, yes, but that number is shrinking.

Medicare covered an estimated 45 million Americans at the end of 2008, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency in charge of the programs. While 92 percent of U.S. family doctors participate in Medicare, only 73 percent of those are accepting new patients under the program, said Heim of the national physicians’ group, citing surveys by the Leawood, Kansas-based organization.

Here’s a question to ponder – what good is having “coverage” if there’s no provider to deliver services?

In an email reader Ryan pointed out: “So of course our government’s response is to expand nationalized health care.  I gather it’s so that more clinics, hospitals and doctors can ultimately refuse to see patients.  Good plan…” Yeah, it’s great isn’t it? But hey, they want to make sure things are fair. Some people shouldn’t have access to quality health care while others don’t. So let’s make it suck equally for everybody. That’s socialism for you.

Via Maggies Notebook, via Stop the ACLU, via memeorandum.