After spending a few days searching for an open forum discussion regarding the pending legislation in the State of Michigan, and finding very little, I decided to create this blogspot to allow open discussion by physicians from all specialties (kind of a unique concept; physicians actually working TOGETHER for their own benefit to share ideas).
I would strongly encourage that each physician forwards this website URL to as many colleagues as possible, as quickly as possible, as the vote on this legislation is going to occur SOON.
The few forums I found seemed to be filled with outrage and deep concern by physicians and some medical students for the future of medicine in Michigan. Most cannot understand how a 3% tax can be levied on the GROSS income of medical providers in Michigan without significant impact on the viability of their practice. This will have a significant negative impact causing a reduction of perhaps 6-20% if the physicians bottom line, at a time when reimbursement is sinking as the federal government is proposing up to 40% reduction in reimbursement, and federal income tax rates are expected to rise. To make matters worse many physicians are paying a small business tax and we are not immune to other increased costs of doing business such as rising fuel/energy, wage/benefits for staff, taxes, ect.
Personally, I feel these changes will be catastrophic to all physicians in Michigan and subsequently to the patients access to quality medical care. Recruitment and retention of physicians in both private practice and hospital positions will be much more challenging than they are currently.
I open this forum for further discussion and encourage active participation by ALL to prevent passage of this legislation. We are viewed as an "easy target" by many, including legislators and insurance companies because of inherent lack of activism (too busy to address issues which directly affect us).
Can we harness the power of the Internet?
Good Luck
4 comments:
Perhaps the thing to do is for all of us to departicipate from medicaid (individually of course). Maybe then we would get the politicians attention.
I believe that happened a few years ago in Tennesse and the "problem" was resloved
VERY quickly.
I assume it wasn't too hard for the politicians, most of whom are lawyers, to propose a tax on physicians. Perhaps the physicians could draft tort reform guidlines?
We just spoke to Jason Allen's (R-MI 37th)office and the aid indicated they have been getting significant respones from physicians in Petoskey and Traverse City indicating their displeasure and deep concern over this proposed legislation.
Forward this information to ALL of your physcian colleagues!
This would create an almost instant primary care shortage, for a number of reasons:
-Primary care docs have a higher percentage overhead, often over 60% of the gross. That means a 3% tax on the gross is a nearly 10% reduction in income.
-Primary care is already under-reimbursed in Michigan compared to other states.
-Other planned legislation is a 8-10% reduction across the board for state Medicaid reimbursement to Drs.
So, you take a family doc in Michigan making, say, $140,000 and suddenly tell him his medicaid is going down 10% and his taxes are going up by $12,000, and all of a sudden he's looking at $118,000 in 2010.
It takes ONE call to recruiter from the back of any journal to get multiple offers over $150,000. There are a lot of nice places to live in this country. Primary care would die in this state, and the ones who stayed would suddenly be very very busy. Too busy for Medicaid, I suspect.
October 20th MSMS is holding a "WHITE COAT" rally in Lansing try to attend. More info at this link. http://www.msms.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&CONTENTID=12452&TEMPLATE=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm
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