Florida’s Medicaid system was another privatization project of our former governor, John Ellis Bush, and is another of his expensive give-aways to corporations that are many times more expensive than necessary, and don’t provide the services required. The insurance companies are they only people happy with the results that provide profits without any performance. It is definitely a “welfare” program, but it is structured as “corporate welfare”, not the welfare of the client base. Patients and health care providers get screwed, and insurance executives get bonuses.
]]>I’m not arguing with with you, Badtux, I’m just being somewhat sarcastic, and more than slightly pissed off that these people, who I have to deal with because of my Mother, never seem interested in improving patient care, only in improving their bottom line.
I’m dealing with my Mother’s specialists who have had to join group practices because of the cost of dealing with insurance companies, which means that every time you call the office you are talking to someone new because the management of the group practice can’t keep employees with its crummy pay and part-time scheduling.
Single payer would be unbelievably beneficial to doctors, but so many just don’t see it. They are buying into the misinformation they have been fed by the insurance propagandists.
If people weren’t making money, they wouldn’t take Medicare.
]]>What they’re *really* carping about is that they can’t make obscene profits off of 80-somethings if they can’t dump those 50-somethings onto the public hospitals the way they currently do. Yes, they don’t “have” to take Medicare… but then they’d give up those obscene profits from the 80-year-olds. Oh the horror, the horror I say, of some government bureaucrat coming between a private corporation and its ability to profit from government welfare! Why, that’s COMMUNISM!
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
.-= last blog ..Medicare is good, except it’s bad =-.
I’m aware of the restrictions on accepting Medicare patients, but they still have the option of not taking Medicare, they just can’t pick and choose among Medicare patients. It’s amazing how some hospitals and doctors seem to thrive on Medicare payments, but others don’t seem to be able to make it. I’ve noticed that the for-profits seem to have most of the problems. Maybe if they cut executive compensation… of course, they can’t possibly do that, so it must be time to lay off some of the cleaning crew and nurses.
]]>Note that one requirement of accepting Medicare is that you accept the Medicare price for the full cost of a covered procedure. You’re not allowed to charge the Medicare customer any more than what the Medicare price is. Medi-Gap pays the 20% of a covered procedure that Medicare doesn’t pay, it doesn’t pay beyond that, because it would be illegal to charge more than that to a Medicare patient. And if you accept Medicare, you accept Medicare — you can’t turn away a Medicare patient just because the particular procedure he needs would not be profitable for you, if you do that’s a violation of your Medicare contract which can then be yanked.
So yeah, I can understand why they’re screaming and yelling. Old people are profitable even at Medicare reimbursement rates because of sheer volume, Medicare may cover only 80% of the cost of the first procedure but if you can bundle 5 procedures the other four procedures don’t cost anywhere near as much as the Medicare reimbursement rate for them and you make decent profit from them. But younger people aren’t yet sick enough to make money by volume that way, and it’s far cheaper for them to dump those younger people onto the collapsing Louisiana public health system.
As for Dr. Patrick Breaux, he doesn’t care about that, he only cares about how much money he can save by dumping those patients into the ditch in front of LSU Medical Center rather than losing money by treating them. My opinion of a doctor who cares more about profit than about patient health is unprintable.
– Badtux the Medical Penguin
.-= last blog ..70’s oldies blogging =-.