Priority given to private insurance at Mayo Clinic

The head of Mayo Clinic tells employees to give priority to patients with private insurance as opposed to Medicare or Medicaid.
(The first thing the Cleveland Clinic appointment line asks is the insurance provider.)

/arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/mayo-clinic-under-fire-for-prioritizing-patients-with-private-insurance/

Discriminatory?

about 30% of health care providers do not take Medicare. about 70% don't take Medicaid. This is nothing new. Has nothing to do with discrimination. Has everything to do with economics.

A well known oncologist that has treated many on this forum does not accept Medicare or any other insurance. The top PCa surgeon in Atlanta does the same and has performed thousands of DaVinci prostate surgeries.

I believe that a lot of doctors put a limit on the number of Medicare patients they accept, due to the lower reimbursement. It IS discrimination, but a perfectly legal kind. A lot of doctors would prefer not taking Medicare patients at all, but since the elderly are such a large part of the patient pool they can't afford not taking Medicare. Reimbursements for Medicaid are much worse than for Medicare, so a Medicaid card is sometimes described as a "fishing license," allowing you to fish for a doctor but it doesn't guarantee you will catch anything.

I don't look t it as active discrimination, but the result is discrimination. I get that depending on a Doctors practice structure, he or she may simply not be able to stay in business on Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements, or may need to limit it to a small % of their practice.

I've been very lucky, so far, any Dr I've seen has always taken Medicare.

My wife is on Faslodex shots for breast cancer maintenance. The shot is monthly and is billed about $9,000. Last year while still on our group insurance it was reimbursed at $6,500. Now on Medicare it is reimbursed at about $1,800. Significant difference isn't it.

The US medical care economy was thrown into a tizzy when the WWII price and wage controls went into effect. To differentiate and recruit limited talent the companies used health insurance and pension benefits to attract and compensate workers. Then the unions realized these benefits as non-wage negotiating items and we find ourselves in a position shared by no other country in the world. This makes it very difficult to move away from the employer sponsored model.

Medicare for all simply doesn't work economically due to the way the government has forced the private portion to subsidize the government portion. Check the total tax rates in the countries that have universal health care and that will tell you what our costs would be. But remember we lead the world in malpractice cost and defensive medicine costs. Those two items double our healthcare costs as a percentage of GDP compared to all the other developed countries.

We have along way to go.