Health Care Bill: What Doctors and Patients Have to Lose

What does the Senate health bill, which is poised to become law, mean for the docs?
According to the Wall Street Journal, the biggest changes will affect specialists and surgeons, mainly regulating medical device and pharmaceuticals and regulating and controlling medical costs. Based on the government's premise that specialists often make wasteful treatment decisions, the health-care legislation in Congress will subject doctors to a mix of financial penalties and regulations to constrain their use of the most costly clinical options. The penalties and regulations are aimed first and foremost at surgeons and the medical devices that they use, largely because that's where the bulk of spending is.

Also, primary care physicians will be affected referring patients to specialists or surgeons. Primary care doctors who refer patients to specialists will face financial penalties under the plan. Doctors will feel financial pressure to limit referrals to costly specialists like surgeons, since these penalties will put the referring physician on the hook for the cost of the referral and perhaps any resulting procedures.

With the new bill, it's clear that doctors will be forced to change how they make their medical decisions.

Read the full article in the Wall Street Journal, or click here:

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