Medicare and the Mayo Clinic
By Jeff Jacoby,
Boston Globe Columnist
January 6, 2010
PRESIDENT OBAMA is a great admirer of the Mayo Clinic. Time and again he has extolled it as an outstanding model of health care excellence and efficiency.
“Look at what the Mayo Clinic is able to do,’’ the president proclaimed at a rally in September. “It’s got the best quality and the lowest cost of just about any system in the country. . . . We want to help the whole country learn from what Mayo is doing.’’ On the White House website, you can find more than a dozen examples of Obama’s esteem.
So perhaps the president will give some thought to the clinic’s recent decision to stop accepting Medicare payments at its primary care facility in Glendale, Ariz. More than 3,000 patients will have to start paying cash if they wish to continue being seen by doctors at the clinic; those unable or unwilling to do so must look for new physicians. For now, Mayo is limiting the change in policy to its Glendale facility. But it may be just a matter of time before it drops Medicare at its other facilities in Arizona, Florida, and Minnesota as well.
Why would an institution renowned for providing health care of “the best quality and the lowest cost’’ choose to sever its ties with the government’s flagship single-payer insurance program? Because the relationship is one it can’t afford. Last year, the Mayo Clinic lost $840 million on its Medicare patients. At the Glendale clinic, a Mayo spokesman told Bloomberg News, Medicare reimbursements covered only 50 percent of the cost of treating elderly primary-care patients. Not even the leanest, most efficient medical organization can keep doing business with a program that compels it to eat half its costs.
(More here.)
Boston Globe Columnist
January 6, 2010
PRESIDENT OBAMA is a great admirer of the Mayo Clinic. Time and again he has extolled it as an outstanding model of health care excellence and efficiency.
“Look at what the Mayo Clinic is able to do,’’ the president proclaimed at a rally in September. “It’s got the best quality and the lowest cost of just about any system in the country. . . . We want to help the whole country learn from what Mayo is doing.’’ On the White House website, you can find more than a dozen examples of Obama’s esteem.
So perhaps the president will give some thought to the clinic’s recent decision to stop accepting Medicare payments at its primary care facility in Glendale, Ariz. More than 3,000 patients will have to start paying cash if they wish to continue being seen by doctors at the clinic; those unable or unwilling to do so must look for new physicians. For now, Mayo is limiting the change in policy to its Glendale facility. But it may be just a matter of time before it drops Medicare at its other facilities in Arizona, Florida, and Minnesota as well.
Why would an institution renowned for providing health care of “the best quality and the lowest cost’’ choose to sever its ties with the government’s flagship single-payer insurance program? Because the relationship is one it can’t afford. Last year, the Mayo Clinic lost $840 million on its Medicare patients. At the Glendale clinic, a Mayo spokesman told Bloomberg News, Medicare reimbursements covered only 50 percent of the cost of treating elderly primary-care patients. Not even the leanest, most efficient medical organization can keep doing business with a program that compels it to eat half its costs.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
This article uses the Heritage Foundation as a source for fear mongering with numbers. Do I trust Heritage Foundation numbers? No. Other things look like general fear mongering on Medicare, like how much will be cut in the next 10 years. Is that Medicare Advantage- a payment to insurance companies, or is that service to seniors?
While it is convenient to hold up Mayo as a voice in the wilderness, Mayo had a front row seat in the disintigration of US medical care system in the last 20 years: US costs were skyrocketing compared to other nations; over a quarter of new doctors, many who came to Mayo to train, were foreign trained- many taking what should have been US jobs if US colleges had been more affordable; the myriad and uneven system of insurance repayment by both private and state suppliers; drug reps and advertising boosting sales of unneccessary and expensive meds and procedures; and both young and experienced Mayo physicians being lured to private practices in the US where they can make 3X as much as at Mayo because Medicare per capita is 2-3X the cost as at Mayo or even MN as a whole. In fact, I suspect the Mayo model would be severely threatened if there is no Medicare reform. Mayo needs Medicare reform to keep it's physicians.
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