Stitcher
04-28-2009, 11:04 AM
If Primary-Care Docs Are Paid More, Will Specialists Get Less?
The Wall Street Journal, By James A. White, April 27, 2009, 3:01 PM ET
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/04/27/if-primary-care-docs-are-paid-more-will-specialists-get-less/
It’s hard to find anyone who opposes the idea of boosting financial incentives for primary-care physicians as a way to help reduce the shortage of docs in that field. The trick is trying to decide where money for those incentives would come from.
Dr. Peter J. Mandell, a spokesman for the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons, underscores the rub in a front-page piece in this morning’s New York Times. “We have no problem with financial incentives for primary care. We do have a problem with doing it in a budget-neutral way,” he says.
More Medicare money for general practitoners would come out of the higher payments that specialists now receive under many –- though not all — of the proposals being discussed in Congress.
The bottom line for the orthopaedic group: “If there’s less money for hip and knee replacements, fewer of them will be done for people who need them,” Mandell told the NYT.
The Wall Street Journal, By James A. White, April 27, 2009, 3:01 PM ET
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/04/27/if-primary-care-docs-are-paid-more-will-specialists-get-less/
It’s hard to find anyone who opposes the idea of boosting financial incentives for primary-care physicians as a way to help reduce the shortage of docs in that field. The trick is trying to decide where money for those incentives would come from.
Dr. Peter J. Mandell, a spokesman for the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons, underscores the rub in a front-page piece in this morning’s New York Times. “We have no problem with financial incentives for primary care. We do have a problem with doing it in a budget-neutral way,” he says.
More Medicare money for general practitoners would come out of the higher payments that specialists now receive under many –- though not all — of the proposals being discussed in Congress.
The bottom line for the orthopaedic group: “If there’s less money for hip and knee replacements, fewer of them will be done for people who need them,” Mandell told the NYT.