Our doctor-patient relationships are changing

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When you’re the father of four daughters, it’s always your hope that one of them will marry a doctor. After all, besides the bragging rights, there’s the potential for a lifetime of free medical care. But the more I speak to doctors in this region and the few I’ve represented around the state, the more I wonder whether it really continues to be a great profession.

Congress is always finding new ways to reduce the payments for doctors who treat Medicare patients. Instead of providing some payment equivalent to what private insurers pay, doctors who treat patients on Medicare are given less and less each year to perform often-complex medical procedures. So it’s no wonder that, each year, more and more doctors refuse to take Medicare patients.

The Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, hasn’t helped the situation. The whole idea for that revolutionary law was that more Americans should have access to health care. But where are the new doctors coming from to provide that care? Medical schools continue to turn out the same number of newly minted physicians each year, but many of us are finding out that our local doctors, who once practiced independently, are joining major hospital systems because they can’t make it on their own. The skyrocketing cost of medical malpractice insurance is just one of the many burdens that a doctor must face.

It’s no secret that the insurance industry has an enormous amount of clout, and sole providers are at the mercy of some big companies that have great leverage. If your doctor throws in the towel and becomes an employee of a major facility, he has a better chance of getting higher reimbursement for his services, because that mega-hospital has more bargaining power.

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