Over a month has passed since the implementation of a new Medicare payment system which was meant to overhaul the overly costly fee structure of chemotherapy treatment of cancer patients. However, in that month there have been complaints from cancer doctors of having to reduce the amount of care, and from patients suffering as a result.

The system, in short, cut the amount Medicare reimburses oncologists for cancer treatment from 95 percent to 85 percent. This was to counter the inflated “average wholesale price” of chemotherapy drugs – according to The Washington Post. “The General Accounting Office estimated in 2000 that Medicare paid at least $500 million more for chemotherapy drugs than doctors paid for them,”according to the post.

“It’s as like we were paying $200 for a screwdriver,” said Leslie V. Norwalk, acting deputy administrator and chief operating officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

However, to make up for the loss of treatment reimbursement, Medicare increased its payments for administrative costs – compensation for nurses and other employees – by 32 percent, a figure which “was designed to offset, if not exceed, the amount of money doctors would lose in drug payments,” according to The Washington Post.

Despite Medicare’s recompense, the complaints are pouring in from upset cancer patients who are facing shorter office hours, less personal care from nurses and more referrals to hospitals.

This leaves the public and the patients to ask the following question: If Medicare was altered to cut excessive and unnecessary treatment costs and is reimbursing doctors more for their personnel, why are patients feeling effects which they were not intended to feel?

There are two possibilities for answers, and one seems more probable than the other. There is a possibility that the system was created with severe miscalculations – the administrative payments were actually not able to keep up with the cuts to reimbursement for treatment.

But the more likely culprits are the cancer doctors. Prior to the Jan. 1 Medicare system change, the figures shown for the actual price and price paid for treatment lended themselves to the high possibility that doctors were making substantial profits from their treatment through this disparagement. With cuts being made to doctors’ cash cow, many doctors already driven to punish patients to collect wealth had to find a new budget area to cut from.

From the complaints, it seems that area was personnel. By cutting both hours and number of employees staffed on any given day, doctors could at least begin to balance their figures back to what they were before the cut.

But what this editorial proves is the problem with the entire system. The new Medicare system, doctors’ practices, treatment costs – none of them have anything to do with improving patient care, but all of them involve making someone’s pockets a little heavier at the end of the day.