The
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
(AAPS) released the following statement
concerning Medicare’s publication of amounts
paid to physicians:CLICK HERE to read online and
comment.“Medicare’s release of data
on physician payments serves no purpose except
to further the federal government’s war on
doctors. Doctors are the scapegoats for the
program’s bankruptcy.
“Most of the high
payments are for very expensive drugs for
macular degeneration or cancer chemotherapy.
Doctors’ earnings are a very small fraction of
the amount.
“What Medicare does not tell
the public is that hospitals are paid much more
than physicians for the very same drugs or
treatments. This is driving independent doctors
out of practice, and patients into hospitals
that are likely to care much more about their
bottom line than about giving the best treatment
to individual patients.
“Asking the
public to help ferret out fraud is a sign of the
incompetence of the program, which pays out
millions to fraudulent operations that are not
providing any real services to patients while it
buries honest doctors in compliance
paperwork.
“The amount that Medicare pays
has nothing to do with the value of the
treatment. Doctors have been under a system of
rigid price controls since the
1980s.
“There is no transparency in the
bureaucracy. What the public really needs to
know is how much money goes to Medicare carriers
and other ‘infrastructure’ without providing a
single doctor visit, xray, wheelchair, drug, or
anything else recognizable as medical care. Some
think this could be 40 percent of the total, or
even more.
“There is no expectation of
privacy for either doctors or patients who take
taxpayer money. The Medicare data release is one
more reason for physicians to
opt
out of Medicare or at least become
nonparticipating so that they can file
non-assigned claims. Then the taxpayer money
goes to the patients. Patients don’t need the
government to tell them how much they paid to
their physicians.
“And if patients want
to be able to choose their treatment, they
cannot allow government to dictate how much can
be paid to whom for what
treatment.”
The Association of
American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a
national organization representing physicians in
all specialties, founded in 1943 to preserve
private medicine and the patient-physician
relationship. 
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