Marlene, I have the benefit of 40 years of practice hindsight to call on here. Looking back only a very few years that what happened was that CMS slowly dropped its reimbursement, (at least relative to usual and customary) and then announced this "bonus" to complying physicians. And, looking back even further (say 30+ years, which I sadly can do), this is what happened with Medicare in the first place. Medicare became law, with budget figures pulled out of thin air to get it passed. Then... OH MY!!!... it cost a LOT more than budgeted. So, naturally, instead of being truthful and saying "Oops.. my bad. I missed a decimal place in my adding machine..." the assumption became it must all be due to fraud and waste. At that point, we entered into the coding game, with physicians documenting reams of useless stuff to try and stay ahead of auditors who were sent forth with the instructions "we KNOW there is massive fraud and waste out there, and if you value your jobs you will find it."
Yes, healthcare for everyone would be a wonderful thing. If they put all physicians on salary and let us stop playing these stupid reimbursement games it might even work, after a fashion. Otherwise, believing that the powers that be will treat us fairly when we ask to be paid for work already done is I believe naive. History has proven otherwise.
