NEW YORK TIMES: …The Affordable Care Act provided a big increase in Medicaid payments for primary care in 2013 and 2014. But the increase expires on Thursday — just weeks after the Obama administration told the Supreme Court that doctors and other providers had no legal right to challenge the adequacy of payments they received from Medicaid…
In his budget request in March, President Obama proposed a one-year extension of the higher Medicaid payments. Several Democratic members of Congress backed the idea, but the proposals languished, and such legislation would appear to face long odds in the new Congress, with Republicans controlling both houses…
For the last two years, the federal government has required state Medicaid agencies to pay at least as much as Medicare pays for primary care services. Family doctors, internists and pediatricians have thus received Medicare-level payments for primary care, with the federal government making up the difference in costs… (more)
EDITOR: A recent article at NewsLanc indicated that Medicare reimbursements were significantly less than what insurance companies are charged. Most doctors will accepet Medicare but are adverse to taking on many, if any, Medicaid patients when compensation is significantly lower.
Fair is fair, and Congress is not acting more from political motivations than common sense when they refuse to increase Medicaid reimbursements. If the sick cannot access a physician, they are forced to go to a hospital emergency rooms where cost is many times greater and by then illness may have become worse.
