General Discussion

Medicare is not much better. My husband was a psychiatrist ( who ended up committing suicide) but he was unique in our community. Most of the psychiatrists did not bill insurance. You paid them and then submitted the claim to your insurance company. My husband went through the arduous process of setting up billing so he could bill Medicare for his patients who had it. He was the only psychiatrist in our community (to our knowledge) who would do that.

He was semi retired at the point when he started billing for his Medicare patients which only paid about half his normal hourly rate. He was on Medicare himself and thought it was the right thing to do, but he still didn't bill private insurance just like his colleagues in the community.

We both supported the concept of single payer and he belonged for years to the Physicians for National Health Program.

http://www.pnhp.org/open/