@MOR_Docs sports medicine fellow | Alum @HSpecialSurgery @harvardmed @HarvardHBS @MIT | Broadly interested in health policy, statistics, cartilage, and sports.
Fayetteville, AR
Joined February 2011
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Nathan Varady retweeted
Pincer FAI: extra rim on the hip socket pinches the labrum with every flexion. We trim the rim arthroscopically. When the labrum cannot be repaired, we reconstruct it with a graft.
Clip 1: fluoroscopic access. Clip 2: the reconstructed labrum sealing the joint.
With @nathanvarady and Dr. Felipe Casanova. Beautiful graft by Mary Kate Walsh.
Nathan Varady retweeted
“Affordable Care Act” still doing its thing! And the people who lied their faces off selling it to the public (who didn’t want it and even sent a Republican Senator from *Massachusetts* to try to stop it) will now tell you the time has come for a full, disastrous government takeover of the system.
Breaking News: Obamacare premiums will rise by 13% next year, hitting middle-income people already struggling with health care costs. nyti.ms/4sCuytF
Nathan Varady retweeted
Obamacare premiums jumping 13% next year means paying $1,200 a month just for the privilege of paying cash for every doctor visit until you hit a $9,000 deductible.
That isn't protection. It's an annual subscription fee to an insurance company that still denies your claims.
teapawt.org/nytimes/status/2116271…
Breaking News: Obamacare premiums will rise by 13% next year, hitting middle-income people already struggling with health care costs. nyti.ms/4sCuytF
Nathan Varady retweeted
This is absolutely nuts. Good for @realDailyWire for doing this.
After Obamacare passed, total spend on Medicaid went from $450 billion to ~ $1 trillion.
And remember anytime anyone tries to touch even the rate of Medicaid spend some academic will roll out a study suggesting mass death will result if you try to curb Medicaid spending or improve oversight.
Ram Chhetri came to the US as a refugee, but this might be worst day of his life: It's the moment he realizes the $80k-$160k/year salary he's bilked from Medicaid for no-show work is coming to an end because @realdailywire caught the truth on camera.
We conducted months of surveillance that shows why "home care aide" is now the *most common job* in states like NY, CA, MN, and PA: Because a large part of those jobs are unambiguous Medicaid fraud.
Thanks to home care, Bhutanese refugees now make more money than actual PA families. The state doesn't just look the other way, but helps them get away with it. Converting federal health dollars into a universal basic income for certain communities relieves the financial burden they place on the state.
The scammers easily deceive the feds' woefully broken monitoring system. You'll see Ram pull into a driveway for 2 minutes in the morning, then 2 minutes in the evening. He clocks in and out of his shift from the right place, and the GPS system doesn't notice that he goes home in between.
$20 an hour doesn't sound like much, but at 77 hours a week, it's $80k–and it's easy to bill huge hours when you don't actually have to work them. And that's just for the low-level guys in this scheme.
Nathan Varady retweeted
For 2027, CMS is proposing another reduction in physician payments while increasing hospital facility payments.
Over the last 20-plus years, physician payments have lost ground to inflation. Hospital outpatient payments, meanwhile, receive regular inflation-based updates.
For a routine level 3 visit, the proposed changes are:
Independent office: about $95 → $93.
On-campus hospital clinic: about $193 → $200–$204, including physician and facility payments.
In my office, that $93 has to cover my time, staff, rent, equipment, EMR and billing.
The physician payment in the hospital falls too. The increase comes from the separate facility fee.
Independent practices face rising overhead without a separate facility payment to offset the cut. That makes independent practice harder to sustain and encourages routine care to move into hospitals, where the total payment is more than twice as much.
Nathan Varady retweeted
We are correct, & we are still villainized. This is why I no longer encourage anyone I know to go into medicine. An honorable profession has been and continues to be destroyed from the outside.
Middlemen have been siphoning money for decades and continue to blame doctors
Nathan Varady retweeted
Physicians have been right at nearly every prediction of the intended and unintended consequences of the ignorant actions wonks and central planners have pushed on its citizens for 20+ years. Yet we still label the docs as greedy and the suits as revolutionary. Quite the psy-op
A drawn-out legislative debate over Medicare for All would mean furious lobbying by the health care industry and likely compromises. A Medicare for All system could end up looking more like Medicare today than the proposals introduced in Congress.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam…
Nathan Varady retweeted
But if you entrust the state to run a single payer healthcare program it’ll be fine, trust us, guys.
Breaking News: The chief executive of California’s High-Speed Rail Authority has abruptly resigned after a recent state report that found that the agency had misused nearly $600,000 to pay for the travel of consultants. This is a developing story. nyti.ms/4zoacHi
Nathan Varady retweeted
Wise words from @JahangirAsgha10 Employed docs think they’re immune to the NSA discussions, but as @FixnBones has said for years, private practice has always been the FMV for determining employed salaries. If the IDR process set up under the NSA goes away, the FMV goes down even more. ALL docs should voice their support for the IDR process that Congress set up to protect patients and give doctors a forum to have their fees reimbursed. Remember, the IDR process exists because INS got rid of OON benefits and has tried to force all docs in network for low rates. INS gets to determine the IN Network rate, not the doctor. Networks should be abolished, they drive up, not down healthcare costs. The large systems who employ many docs are, IN Network and you’ll pay a lot more having care there. When no US Trained docs will work for the rates, here come the IMGs to the rescue and increased scope of practice of Mid Levels. This should concern every American.
I would love for our employed colleagues to pay more attention to what’s going on with the No Surprises Act.
Many of these conversations get so complicated that everyone outside of out-of-network medicine tunes out.
So we assume it doesn’t affect us.
However, you do need to look at how your compensation is set.
Your salary and your dollars per RVU are influenced by surveys and fair market value analyses that examine what other physicians are being paid.
Out-of-network physicians’ ability to negotiate influences payment rates across the market. If you weaken that leverage by eliminating independent dispute resolution, you can put downward pressure on reimbursement.
If that translates into lower physician earnings, those lower numbers can become part of the benchmarking used to set your compensation.
That is why this matters to everyone.
Your salary should not be the default answer to everything that is wrong with healthcare. Advocating for yourself and your compensation is your responsibility.
Being employed does not make this someone else’s problem
Nathan Varady retweeted
Under a Democrat administration they launched ACA. It’s a failure.
The marketplace is in shambles and prices have consistently gone up and out of reach for most families.
Now the game plan is state run healthcare for “all.”
It’s insane. Hold people and their failed policies accountable. Vote for something different.
Nathan Varady retweeted
How about we change the model. Run Medicare and Medicaid like SNAP for outpatient services. Fund the patients and let them pay, not the facilities.
Nathan Varady retweeted
It’s No Joke. Nonprofit Hospitals Are More Profitable than For-Profit Hospitals
Studies find that nonprofit hospitals achieve greater profits with higher average prices than for-profit hospitals. On average, nonprofits have 29% greater profits than for-profits.
scottahodge.substack.com/p/i…
What’s the median?
Average U.S. health spending per person increased to $15,474 in 2024, not necessarily because we’re sicker, but because of increased prices. Find out where the money’s coming from and how it’s being spent. @renurayasam
kffhealthnews.org/health-car…
Nathan Varady retweeted
“The reward is another 20% pay cut.” AAHKS President @DrAntoniaChen writes in @the535news that CMS' proposed cuts to hip and knee replacement payments could undermine Washington's pro-competition agenda and accelerate consolidation of independent practices.
Read more: 535.news/op-ed/medicares-hip…
#Medicare #HipAndKnee #AAHKS #CMS – at Calumet City, IL
Nathan Varady retweeted
People often ask me why I advocate so strongly for independent physician practice. I am an employed doctor, after all.
Well, this is why👇
Employed docs are just widget makers. Produce RVU, click the boxes, follow the protocols.
They’ll replace us as soon as they can get away with it.
A thriving independent physician sector keep us all safer.
Anyone not surprised pediatrics is the first to go? Silly employee docs, your heads are the next to roll.
thebostonweekly.com/mass-gen…
Nathan Varady retweeted
We have the best health system in the world despite our flaws and the main reason, competition and private practices. Had a family member I accompanied to a local Urgent Care/ER. Checked in, taken to a room,seen quickly by ER doc. Friendly,good service. Patient had CXR, labs drawn. Diagnosed with pneumonia,IVs, antibiotics given. Discharged. All within a few hours and would have been sooner, but one antibiotic had to run over an hour. Americans are used to being able to get this level of service. If you have Medicare for all, this will go away. No one to complain to, no competition to go to instead. You can’t pay more to go to front of the line, or go to a private clinic. This type of care decreases costs, morbidity and mortality. Efficient care saves lives. Anyone advocating for a Medicare for all system, is either a paid shill or ignorant on healthcare. We can provide a basic safety net option for all Americans without destroying the private system. Those thinking my family member got special care because of who I am, didn’t let them know until discharge.
Oh and while I was there, had the ER doc look up our friend @noahkaufmanmd of @KaufCare and we discussed his model. Was very impressed.
🤖 Made with AI
Nathan Varady retweeted
Premiums went up 5% this year. None of my insurance contracts did. The increase isn't reaching the doctors treating the patients.
Nathan Varady retweeted
BREAKING: The average cost of a family’s annual health insurance premium in the US is up +$1,303 YoY, or +5%, to a record $28,303.
This marks the 4th consecutive annual increase of at least +$1,300.
Over this period, the average annual premium for family coverage has surged +$5,884, or +26%.
To put this into perspective, CPI inflation has risen +13% over the same period, or half as much.
Since 1999, the average health insurance premium for a family has soared +$22,494, or +387%.
This represents an average annual growth rate of +6.1%, well above CPI inflation at +2.6% over the same period.
Health insurance has never been more expensive.
Nathan Varady retweeted
Agreed.
Something crazy.
63% of all seniors' healthcare costs are health insurance premiums. Read that again.
Insurance premiums.
Not surgery, doctors bills, meds, specialists, etc.
Insurance.
Healthcare is not broken.
Health insurance is broken.
