By the way, happy Health Care Festivus.  For those of you new to the blog, this week the federal government will not be sending out checks to health care providers for payments due them on medicare recipients.  It is simply a way to save money.  Yes, we still have to pay our bills and make payroll but that is besides the point from their perspective.  If they did this to postal workers, members of Congress, Veterans, government retirees, you would have undoubtedly heard about it on the all major news network.  Since we are health care workers, it isn’t noteworthy.  Neither is the impending 5.1% Medicare cut in fee schedule except to a few politicians concerned about their re-election.

Anyhow, from today’s WSJ (article free for 7 days):

“The health-care premiums of employers and their workers have climbed twice as fast as wages and inflation in 2006 — to nearly double their cost in 2000 — and look to rise at a similar clip next year, two nationwide surveys show.”

Average family premiums rose 7.7% in 2006.  Although this is less then double digit rates than what appeared in 2003, it still exceeds inflation.

How many of our readership have experienced any rise in reimbursement to these levels?  PT which generally represents from 2-5% of the health care premium dollar has been over-represented in cuts.  Sure, we can set our pricing as high as we want but at the end of the day, we are at the whim of payors who have generally decreased our reimbursement or at best kept our rates flat for years.  We are unfortunately in an industry that we can’t pass our increased costs of doing business to our customers and that is about as worth celebrating as our lack of payments this week by Medicare.

Thoughts?

Larry