Medicare - More U.S. Doctors Accepting New Medicare Patients: Study - The Center for Studying Health System Change has done a study which shows that, despite a slight decline in reimbursement rates, the percentage of U.S. doctors accepting new Medicare patients has increased over the past four years. Although doctors may be willing to accept a one time fee reduction in Medicare, yearly fee cuts would lead to a reduction in doctors willing to accept new Medicare patients.
From this, one can gather that Medicare is becoming too costly for the government, and hence the elderly who are on the plan will be the ones who suffer. Even though the doctors are at a financial disadvantage by taking in new Medicare patients, they do so anyway, since the fee cuts are not so high that the doctors can become seriously affected by them. This does offer hope to the elderly on Medicare, at least for the time being. There is little doubt that fee cuts will occur in the future, though, and when they do, doctors may begin refusing to accept new Medicare patients.