They would immediately start taking Medicare when nearly all available patients moved to it. They can only afford to not take it now because other customers are available.
Re:Affordable Care
by importantbrian on Friday January 13, 2017 @04:47PM
(#13394992)
This. Plus that's not really different than the situation now. Not every doctor takes my employer offered plan either.
If we hit a point where nearly all people were on Medicare, we'd be bankrupt anyway.
But continuing with your theoretical environment: no, they would consider adding new patients until they had a critical mass and then stop accepting new patients.
> If we hit a point where nearly all people were on Medicare, we'd be bankrupt anyway.
No we wouldn't, we'd be in a much better position and we'd be paying much less for healthcare. Medicare has far less overhead than private insurance and it'd be the logical move to establish a far more effective and cheaper system of socialized medicine.
Many doctors don't take Medicare. Over a situation where say there are 3 doctors for a specialty in a town... the two better ones do not take it, and the new less good one will take it. So if that flat answer is let everyone take medicare, I think there are some serious quality of care problems.
(I have no better solution though, every angle seems bad).