Medicare Stinginess Casts Pall Over Primary Care

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Benjamin Brewer, who writes the Doctor’s Office checks in with an update to his most recent piece, about the proposed cuts in Medicare’s payments to doctors. His column contemplated that a planned 10.1% cut, on average, might be averted, as previous proposed cuts had been. Brewer says the economic pressure on primary care remains. The core problem is that the lack of meaningful increases in Medicare payments to primary care doctors amounts to a cut anyway in the face of steadily rising costs for providing care. One doctor I talked to told me that he’s mulling a career change out of medicine. Though his practice seems to be growing in size, profitability isn’t. a big part of what is wrong with our health care “system.” It causes thoughtful care by engaged, compassionate people to go by the wayside in favor of churning people The docs that remain have the capacity to see a patient every six minutes all day long, but not much time or capacity to care.