Dr. Bob Russo is sure of it. He’s a radiologist and he’s also the president-elect of the Connecticut State Medical Society. He says that the low rates and administrative burdens that come along with the ACA could make it a financial loser.
“You get what you pay for,” he says. “If you can’t convince [doctors] that they’re not losing money doing their job, it’s a problem. And they haven’t been able to convince people of that.”
He, like Counihan, worries about creating a tiered health care system. Think about Medicaid, he says. Before a recent rise in rates, it paid doctors even less than Medicare, so many stopped accepting Medicaid patients.
“There’s no question that Medicaid, under its old rates, wasn’t working,” he says. “So, have we just invented a new Medicaid that kind of slid the scale up a little more to make access a little more?”