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Here is the blurb from the FTC site…

The Commission vote to issue the administrative complaint and to place the consent order on the public record for comment and publish a copy in the Federal Register was 4-0.

The Commission is accepting comments on the order for 30 days, until March 2, after which it will decide whether to make it final.

Comments should be sent to: FTC Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, DC, 20580.

Comments also can be submitted electronically at:

https://public.commentworks.com/ftc/roaringforkconsent

Are you crazy? I would bet that “reimbursment rates” would be much higher than 20%…plus, your expenses would plummet.

We do not know when “Big Brother” of 1984 will attack us, but we labor on. By the way, our collection ratio is over 98% if our charges.

All docs should become independent of power forces including the AMA.

Actually, if you read the FTC’s statement more carefully, it is clear that this IPA refused to use the Medicare payment methodology, but didn’t set any floor on the actual dollars to be paid.

We don’t have Medicare based rates here, but the rates are based on the RVU, which is a relative value (of work) unit. Medicare and Medicaid pay the lowest per RVU of anyone, but the insurance companies each have a rate per RVU not a fraction of what Medicare pays.

The problem is that this IPA failed to comply with the rules for a messenger-model IPA; they agreed as a group to set a minimum floor for commercial contracts. The fact that the minimum that they set was Medicare rates in simply coincidental; they could have just as easily (and just as illegally) picked a specific dollar amount. The problem is that these were competing physicians, and they therefore cannot collectively agree on minimum rates that they will accept; in order to comply with the messenger model IPA regulations, they must each independently set their own rates and the IPA must not facilitate sharing of fee information among members of the IPA.

There is nothing in the ruling that prevents any individual physician, or any physician group practice, from refusing to accept Medicare rates from any commercial insurer; it simply enforces the laws that prevent competitors from working together to set prices.

However, this group of physicians should point to the fact that the test of the legality of what they are doing is: does it promote or suppress competition?
(Chicago board of trade vs US 246 U.S. 231)

I believe they are promoting competition in the medical market.

But wait, there’s more! If a physician cannot refuse to sign Medicare contracts, how long before he cannot refuse to accept Medicare patients? How long next before he will be assigned hours and workplace locations? How long next until the young physician will be assigned specialties, with subspecialty slots severely limited and tightly controlled.

But wait, there’s more! When Medicare/Medicaid finally becomes unsustainable, when medical care is universal but physicians are in short supply, the political pressures will be enormous to make physicians ‘wards of the state’. At that point (soon, perhaps 15 years into boomer retirement), we will become captive prisoners of the state!

Hoo boy, am I glad to be one of the boomers set to retire, and leave the house of medicine.

Don’t want to provide government care? Better get your self a good lawyer.