Effect of National Health Care on Private Practice Physical Therapy Clinics

[Guest guest]

Dear Group,

This is more of an information gathering post than an information giving

post, so I'll get right to it. In my research over the last few years of

politics and political agendas, I have come to the conclusion that allowing

the government to enact any plan of Nationalized Healthcare - outside of

Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP as they are right now - would in effect put

all of our private practices out of business. I believe that the lack of

choices available to the general public, and the government being in control

of yet another failing system in this country would destroy competition in

our industry, and would be a great benefit to hospital based therapy

services, but would be terrible for private practice. I don't know what it

is like trying to get credentialed with HMO insurance companies outside of

Wisconsin, but in our practice, we have been told in no uncertain terms that

we will NEVER be allowed in any HMO network as long as there is a hospital

based clinic within 20 miles of us.

Consequently, there are at least 4 hospital based clinics within 20 miles of

our clinic, and all of our attempts to join HMO networks, so that we might

be able to cater to a larger range of patients, has ended in a denial from

the insurance company for the very reason listed above. With the government

possibly taking over Healthcare for everyone, it becomes easy to imagine

that they would want to sped as little money as possible in order to cover

as many people as possible, and HMO Health Insurance will become the norm in

our industry, making it nearly impossible to serve those patients unless

they are willing to pay out of pocket. This is severely unlikely, being

that they could just go to the hospital based clinic down the block and get

" free " Physical Therapy because it's covered under their taxpayer funded -

and capped like Medicare - Health plan.

Not only do we have to worry about the HMO issue, but we also have to worry

about the hospitals and their bureaucrats being able to charge less than

private practices to " the insurance company " than we can because they have

so much more revenue to go around to keep them in business, and keep us out

of competition just by undercutting our prices.

So, with that out of the way, I'd like to know how some of you are dealing

with the prospect of having Nationalized Health Care... By the way, if you

can give me good, viable, verifiable reasons why Nationalized Health Care

might actually benefit Private Practices, I might be swayed, but as yet, the

best argument anyone can come up with is that the cheapest insurance pool is

one where everyone is enrolled. I often hear the same poor arguments, and

then I look to countries that have had National Health Care programs for

years like Great Britain and Canada, who's patients are literally flying to

the United States in droves just to get their healthcare NOW instead of

having to wait up to 6 months for a CT scan when cancer is the likely

diagnosis. In most cases, if a patient has a possible brain cancer

diagnosis, 6 months could very well be too late. I don't want to have that

risk here in this country... it scares me.

Adam Jeschke

Optimal PT

Lake Mills, WI