Doozy of a plan

Health care

The plan described in “Docs warn of flaw in plan” (Monday, A1) should not only be a concern to doctors, it should be a major concern to Medicare beneficiaries with comorbidities. Clearly, a complex patient should require much more time to assess than a simple case. To pay doctors the same for both encounters is nonsense.

The fix to reducing doctors’ time at the computer is to simplify the record systems, not to dramatically reduce pay for encounters with complex cases. The impact on patients could be serious. If doctors are to be paid much less for a complex encounter, then these may be shortened, causing a higher risk of overlooking serious illnesses that could have been discovered during the encounter. Medicare has a tendency to disregard patient wishes in deference to the wishes of “industrial medicine.”

If patients had been asked about this proposal, they would have been horrified.

John T. James, Houston Clear assault

My worst fears are coming true. This administration has said that it would cut what they call entitlement spending (Medicare, Social Security), to help pay for their tax-cut bill, but I really didn't think it would happen this quickly and on the backs of seniors.

I understand the importance of reducing paperwork for doctors, but by cutting payments also, now doctors can choose to not see Medicare patients at all, spend even less time with their patients if they do see them, not document their patients' records, or even make the sickest seniors wait many, many months for an appointment.

This new assault on health care for seniors, which will begin in January, sounds like a death panel to me.

Nancy Rilling, Houston