Do Doctors Get Paid For Medicaid Patients. For most, medicare and medicaid pay the least. Specifically, medicare is paying primary care physicians a 10% bonus for primary care services from 2011 through 2015, and primary care physicians’ medicaid reimbursements for evaluation and management services and vaccinations are being raised to medicare rates in 2013 and 2014.

Most doctors in private practice lose money on medicaid patients, because the program pays less than commercial health plans or medicare, the federal insurance program for americans over 65. Not surprisingly, it starts with low reimbursement rates. Since a physician’s office overhead alone is 30 percent to 50 percent of every dollar charged, it puts a lot of pressure on.