Medicare Refusals Start Ramping Up

Although Obamacare hasn't started yet, some of the Medicare cuts championed by the Democrats already have been put in place. This is only the start of what is going to happen to the healthcare of seniors once the big cuts being passed by Congress kick in. Keep fighting to stop the destruction of the greatest healthcare system ever known, and keep fighting to prevent further cuts in Medicare.

Mayo Clinic in Arizona to Stop Treating Some Medicare Patients

By David Olmos Bloomberg (Excerpt)

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- "The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.

More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.

Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.

“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”"