``This has been the final straw for physicians,'' said Lee H. McCormick, the president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, which has about 19,000 physician members. ``These kinds of things have been happening all along, and physicians feel that sometime it has got to stop.''
Specialists were the hardest hit by the lower reimbursement rates, and, in recent weeks, about 300 orthopedic surgeons, urologists and others have joined the Federation of Physicians and Dentists, a union representing about 8,000 doctors around the country.
Nearly 90 percent of the area's orthopedic surgeons have signed up with the federation, according to its executive director, Jack Seddon.
Blue Cross said, however, that the reimbursement reductions were necessary to control health-care costs and remain competitive. And the insurer pointed out that it raised the reimbursement fees for primary-care doctors.
``Those kinds of things are not done to increase profits,'' said G. Fred DiBona Jr., the president and chief executive of Independence Blue Cross. ``We estimate that the overall decrease, when you look at all the revisions - who was raised and who was lowered - at the end of the day, it was about a 2 percent decrease across the board.''
He said the new reimbursement rates were drafted to reflect changes made by the federal Medicare program to lower rates for specialists and to increase payments to primary-care physicians who have more responsibility for patient care under managed care.
``That doesn't mean that there aren't some mistakes in there. There may have been areas where we gave too much and there may have been areas where we cut too much,'' DiBona said. ``We will continue to review that and make adjustments where we believe it is necessary.''
The Pennsylvania Medical Society estimates that the new rates for doctors are 82 percent of the rate paid by the Medicare program.
