Thanks for your help too! You pointed me in the right direction so I could learn a bit more about it, and understand who supported it and who didn’t. You’re probably right about the employer thing, and I guess I was pushing my luck thinking I could understand all the legal jargon.

Sandy,

Welcome! Glad to see someone from my profession in here weighing in as well. I hear you about the fee rates, and I’m glad to hear that Medicaid pays out decently well. I’m right there with you on some other insurances, as there are times I’ll do really well with one company, and do very mediocre with another company.

What can you do about it? You could choose not to accept the insurance, but that limits your client base. Sometimes its best to get paid something rather than nothing. Sometimes quantity can help over size of pay. Let’s hope we don’t have to jack up the size of our practice to continue to stay in business.

Thanks guys, good stuff!

I’m optimistic as a self-employed consumer of individual health insurance policies goes.

I’m very curious about the quality of the federal plan we will be able to buy into. Most people I know who are Medicare subscribers are happy with the net result (even die-hard anti-big governmenters). Encouraging.

On the issue of fees paid to providers, I know of several large private plans that pay me less than Medicare pays. One plan in particular hasn’t given me a raise on my hourly contract rate for ten years. Maybe I’m doing something wrong? Too passive? Should be writing letters or threatening to drop off the provider list? I don’t know. But I’d rather be paid less knowing that more people are covered, than be paid less by private insurance companies who are taking exhorbitant profits.

From what I’ve read, heard, and understood in my reading of the legislation, you may be slightly mistaken about employees ability to opt out of their employer coverage. The way I understand it, starting out, most people who have sufficient coverage through their employers will not be able to opt for a public plan. That option will only be available to people who are uninsured (assuming they don’t qualify for medicaid), underinsured, or whose employers choose to go with the public plan (in which the employer pays a fee to the government which will in turn be used like the employer portion of private insurance programs).

Thanks for the mature approach and examination of this issue.