Why did Doctors give up their own practices? Our practices were stolen from us. We didn’t allow anything. Why would a Doctor sacrifice 7-10 years of their life to be treated like dogs? Doctors are paid with RVU Coupons, not money when we submit a bill for payment to your Health Insurance. The RVU Coupons are then redeemed for cash to feed our children. We can’t buy a a slurpee with RVUs. They started paying Doctors with RVUs in 1992. 1 RVU in 1992 was worth $31.00. Without even a pay raise, Adjusted for inflation 1 RVU should be worth $71.00. 1 RVU in 2025 was worth $32. That’s a 56% pay cut. You can’t pay staff, rent, electricity, medical supplies or feed your children without money. Physician independence was stolen by your Health Insurance and Hospitals.

Let’s talk about physician payment for a minute and why that AMA graph just doesn’t feel like it tells the whole story. Here’s why… Let’s start with how the AMA calculates its graphic. They work on the specified update, which is what Congress set out to do that year… but that’s only half the story Each year, the conversion factor (CF) is recalculated by multiplying the prior year CF by the statutory update by the budget-neutrality adjustment. When you only go on the statutory update, you miss a big potential gain or loss due to budget neutrality. @anish_koka has explained why budget neutrality has doomed the physician fee schedule permanently. The AMA has provided Congress with years of bad data that ignores the massive financial trouble that budget neutrality has caused and created a far rosier picture. When you look at the AMA graph, it appears doctors have seen a 10% increase since 2000. The 2000 CF was $36.6137. The 2027 proposed CF is $32.84. That’s over 10% in the negative direction. We need truth in advertising. I begged the specialty societies and the AMA to fix their graphs. I spent 3 years asking for it. No one listened. So, I did what I had to do and I pulled the data together. Below is the work product of that venture and a graph that I think (visually) shows the much more striking reason why doctors are leaving medicine or selling their practices. The first graph looks at things from the perspective of the 2000 CF. If we just compare how much doctors and hospitals are paid, we see that physician pay via CF has declined 10.3% while hospital pay has increased 97% and inflation (MEI) has increased 71%. That seems pretty stark but I think the second graph uses the same numbers but in a more effective way. The second graph assumes that MEI is the baseline. In other words, what if doctors just got what they were paid in 2000, updated for the cost of inflation. Now we see what really has happened. Doctors are 81.3% behind inflation while hospitals are 26.8% above inflation. No wonder hospitals are buyers and doctors are sellers in this market. It’s time for truth in advertising. It’s time Congress and CMS heard the real numbers. 81% behind inflation over 25 years and even worse when compared to HOPDs. Our government created this crisis and they will need to understand the issues they created to get us out. Follow us at @IndeMedAction as we shine the light on issues critical to independent physicians.