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Don't know what happens, but something will. Medical service pricing is a fraud on its face. No used car dealer would try to collect twenty times a reasonable price for a car, but that is standard procedure for the hospitals. And no, I call BS to those who say it can ALWAYS be negotiated. Medicare as we know it is doomed--rife with fraud. Medicare pays $2200 for $200 wheel chairs, for one tiny example. Drug costs going up 400% in ten years on an unchanged drug? Like Shkreli, only not so dramatic.
We'll end up with true effective death panels like they have in every other developed country in the world.
And you better start taking care of yourself, because some day there will be a new sheriff in town and he isn't going to do open heart surgery on 66 year olds.
Rife with fraud?
I tend to use the example of a walker or elevated potty seat that can be purchased at Walmart for $ 39.95
Walmart does not bill Medicare so those in need of such devices are given a script and sent to a medical supply house that charged $ 399.50 for a similar chair and bills Medicare. Since the patient is not paying out of pocket for it, most don't care what it costs.
This is not fraud. This is by design. Medical devise manufacturers, along with Big Pharma and Big hospital lobby Congress to protect their interests.
Medicare could easily negotiate and buy millions of genetic walkers and potty seats for $9.95 a piece and have the distributer overnight them to patients in need. But nooooooo. That would cut out the middlemen and their profits.
Lobbies seek to protect their self interests and support politicians who support them. It's not a partisan issue.
Long ago in my medical past I served as either chief of medicine or chief of medical staff, and as such sat in on monthly hospital board meetings in the '80's and '90's.
Since DRG's were instituted as Medicare hospital payment in the early '80s, I had to ask every month why the Medicare 'write offs' were so huge since they knew what the payments were to be. Their 'charges' column was not their costs.
Where do you boobs get that chit? 80 year olds are getting knee, hip, heart and other procedures performed in those "other developed countries".
America is the country that denies it's citizens healthcare through a variety of panels from insurance company denials of payment to letting your people fall through the cracks by the thousands to having the worst death rate due to medical errors committed by hospitals and doctors than all the rest of the developed countries of the world.
Stop with the comparing to "other countries" and own the shame of being a so-called civilized first world country that cannot remove greed from the provision of one of life's necessities to all of it's citizens.
Your failure; you own it!
Your comments are true, just don't forget that we have to pay a doc to do the knee or heart. And a hospital to do it in.
Since DRG's were instituted as Medicare hospital payment in the early '80s, I had to ask every month why the Medicare 'write offs' were so huge since they knew what the payments were to be. Their 'charges' column was not their costs.
Exactly..
the first step to "fixing" healthcare costs in america is to bring in line the billed totals, with the paid totals..
Where do you boobs get that chit? 80 year olds are getting knee, hip, heart and other procedures performed in those "other developed countries".
America is the country that denies it's citizens healthcare through a variety of panels from insurance company denials of payment to letting your people fall through the cracks by the thousands to having the worst death rate due to medical errors committed by hospitals and doctors than all the rest of the developed countries of the world.
Stop with the comparing to "other countries" and own the shame of being a so-called civilized first world country that cannot remove greed from the provision of one of life's necessities to all of it's citizens.
Your failure; you own it!
You are not up on the rationing or denial of procedures based in part on age, in the nationalized health care systems in other countries. Read more. And you mistake my desire: we MUST end up with the same setups, because we cannot afford what we are doing now. We all own all the shame of our current system, along with the shame of a 35% obesity rate, uncontrolled diabetics, smokers, non-exercisers, people who eat worthless food....I'm just saying things are going to change.
You are not up on the rationing or denial of procedures based in part on age, in the nationalized health care systems in other countries. Read more. And you mistake my desire: we MUST end up with the same setups, because we cannot afford what we are doing now. We all own all the shame of our current system, along with the shame of a 35% obesity rate, uncontrolled diabetics, smokers, non-exercisers, people who eat worthless food....I'm just saying things are going to change.
Again, if we have the proper priorities we can pay for it. The limits will be in our ability to have enough docs and facilities provide the necessary and desired future HC services. Not the money per se.
You are not up on the rationing or denial of procedures based in part on age, in the nationalized health care systems in other countries.
My mother fell and broke her hip last May. She had a partial hip replacement the following morning. She was 94 at the time. No charge.
I frequent the Caregiving forum here on C-D. Reading about the financial issues American elderly have to face, particularly those who do not qualify for Medicaid, is heartbreaking.
I don't disagree, but I do believe that we do not want gov't provided hospitals as our only choice.
Thats not really what I meant.
Government could pass a law requiring billed totals to match reimbursement rates. Its dumb to send out a bill for $300 for x, when the hospital is only expecting to be paid $25..
If the hospital had sent the bill for $25 to the cash paying customer, its more likely to be paid, thereby not pushing the uninsured onto the backs of the rest.
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