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Thursday, October 30, 2014

Over 214,000 Doctors Opt Out of Obamacare Exchanges

Over 214,000 doctors won't participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) analysis of a new survey by Medical Group Management Association shows. That number of 214,524, estimated by American Action Forum, is through May 2014, but appears to be growing due to plans that force doctors to take on burdensome costs. It's also about a quarter of thetotal number of 893,851 active professional physicians reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In January, an estimated 70% of California's physicians were not participating in Covered California plans.

Here are some of the reasons why:

1. Reimbursements under Obamacare are at bottom-dollar - they are even lower than Medicare reimbursements, which are already significantly below market rates. "It is estimated that where private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and ACA exchange plans are now paying about $0.60," a study by the think-tank American Action Forum finds. "For example, Covered California plans are setting their plan fee schedules in line with that of Medi-Cal-California's Medicaid Program-which means exchange plans are cutting provider reimbursement by up to 40 percent."

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, if I bought a policy on the federal or state exchange, my doctor may not accept it, but if I bought from a local broker,they would? How does the doctor's office know if a Blue Cross(for example) was bought on the exchange or not?

Anonymous said...

I call BS. The insurance companies control this, not the affordable care act. The ACA has brought a ton of people onto the roles and a ton of money into insurers pockets. If this was so horrible their profits would decrease not increase. The big issue people don't want to hear is that if you don't take care of yourself and run to the doctor every five minutes, you are going to pay more because you cost more. It's very simple, if you choose to pop a pill for every ailment as opposed to taking preventative measures you are going to pay more because you are sucking the system dry. It's the reason Medicaid sucks budgets dry.