It seems that the new legislation will restrict the physicians to switch their patients unnecessarily to expensive medicines and that will certainly work in favor of the medicare users.
One unintended result might be very limited availability of part c palns in rural areas that are primarily served by private fee for service plans or the benefits might be reduced in these areas.
The new legislation requres pffs type plans to have networks like ppo or hmo in place to replace their "deeming ' process currently in use which allows doctors to decide paitent by paitent, visit by vist, if they want to accept the plan or not. (by 2011) This is an expensive process for the insurance companies who do not have a network in place. Their funding is also being cut at the same time.
A lot of rural areas only have these pffs plans available and I already know of one plan which is increasing the copays and max out of pocket, and annother company that has decided to leave the medicare advantage market alltogether.
Hopefully the rural areas will not be ignored when these remaining companies set up their networks. _________________ Thinking about becoming a health insurance agent or just getting started out as one?
