The inevitable never disappoints.
Everyone who understands health care agrees that primary care physicians should get more money. And anyone who is paying attention to the big payers–the federal government and employers–knows that they want a zero-sum game.
That means other health care providers will get less money if the PCPs get a raise–and that means squawking is inevitable. Surgeons recently emitted a squeal by sending a letter to the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee protesting its recommendation that PCP pay rates should be increased in a budget-neutral way.
The Wall Street Journal’s terrific Health Blog interviewed Christian Shalgian from the American College of Surgeons to learn:
“We as the surgical community don’t have a problem with increasing payments to primary care physicians…(but) when MedPac is making a recommendation to do it in a budget-neutral manner, that means we as a surgical community will be cut in order to increase payments to primary care physicians. We have a fundamental problem with that.”
And so will lots of other physicians. Sit back and watch the “Who’s the most important physician?” debate unfold. It should be fun.