I am on board with us needing to help people get better health care however, I don't think Obamacare will do it. IN short, I think people may have some insurance but not sure how it would affect private practice if we don't take the insurance (unless government forces us to). I think that it hurts a lot of our patients that chose to be cash pay. I have a lot of 21-35 year olds who don't have insurance if they are single because it is cheaper for them to pay cash for random visits they need. In that case it hurts me as the provider because we all know cash is king.
I am not sure yet the ramifications of which insurance policy people would have out. It may bring down our payments if everyone starts following medicare and other payment plans. I haven't been affected by the medicare reduced rate because I only have about 15 medicare patients on my load.
Our state as Wendell said is out of money so as it is anything that the having to be paid by the state we aren't getting paid on. Right now for example Cigna (some of it) was taken over by the state and I am getting random checks every month of $5.24 or $9.36 or $2.13 (you get the point) and it is just paying me some type of "interest rate" on the money they owe me ..some of it from freaking 9 months ago. So if the govt insurance plan if they make it work is gonna be paid by the states..then those of us in IL are screwed....not sure about other states.
I guess I am happy that where I am at, I don't see a lot of people jumping onto that insurance plan...Most of my patietns are UHC and BCBS and Humana...I am hoping it stays that way and it just sits well for me...I think I should have opened my practice 10 years ago instead of 3 and I would have been doing much better...oh yeah..10 years ago I was still in med school (well just leaving)
