I have a friend who works in a very well known medical center, and I did't believe it when she said a lot of doctors may stop accepting Medicare because of the pay structure.

But now I saw a spot on the news about the same subject. What's going on here? Do we need to worry that by the time we get to Medicare age (if not there yet), it will be almost useless. This is scary.

David,

You have raised an interesting point. Er uh...right or wrong, I'll worry about Medicare when I get there. Since you raised that concern, the new health care bill was passed. Let's hope.

Yes, there will be some changes in Medicare "and" Medicaid because some of the benefits provided will be transferred over to Obamacare.

Physicians, clinics, hospitals, etc., will be filing claims, as usual, but cost factors (pricing) will change and the government will be subsidizing payments to those facilities as well as insurance companies and drug companies accordingly.

Even now, perhaps most people are not aware, those that are using Plan D, the prescription drug plan is being subsidized already by the government. In other words, what a person is paying for a particular prescription is not the full cost of that prescription. Insurance companies are getting the "above your cost" amount in subsidy...

At present, Obamacare has a long way to go, 2014, and then it will need debugging, we can expect some suffering situations. There are some changes in affect this year regarding the plan and we can also expect them to require debugging, especially with the Medicaid provisions...

I personally was wishing for socialized medecine but as much as I don't like this Obamacare, it does provide some very beneficial improvements, especially for so many un-insured. What I don't like is that it does not reign in the power of the insurance companies and drug companies whom still have the ability to raise prices...

Sandra...