Just six months before the first of the baby-boomers become eligible, and with the expiration of the last “Doc Fix” triggering a 21 percent reduction in reimbursement rates, doctors are pushing Medicare patients out the door.

Some of the numbers, from USAToday:

–The American Academy of Family Physicians says 13% of respondents didn’t participate in Medicare last year, up from 8% in 2008 and 6% in 2004.
–The American Osteopathic Association says 15% of its members don’t participate in Medicare and 19% don’t accept new Medicare patients. If the cut is not reversed, it says, the numbers will double.
– The American Medical Association says 17% of more than 9,000 doctors surveyed restrict the number of Medicare patients in their practice. Among primary care physicians, the rate is 31%.
– In Illinois, 18% of doctors restrict the number of Medicare patients in their practice, according to a medical society survey.
– In North Carolina, 117 doctors have opted out of Medicare since January, the state’s medical society says.
– In New York, about 1,100 doctors have left Medicare. Even the medical society president isn’t taking new Medicare patients.

This is a big part of why nobody with any intellectual honesty believes the proposed half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts used to fund Obamacare will ever come to pass.