Obamacare
Quote: rdw4potusWhy would your wife's private insurance company pay pennies on the dollar?
There will eventually be no private companies,
thats rather the point of Obamacare. To put
the private companies out of business by
undercutting them at every turn. Somebody
hasn't been paying attention.
Quote: EvenBobThere will eventually be no private companies,
thats rather the point of Obamacare. To put
the private companies out of business by
undercutting them at every turn. Somebody
hasn't been paying attention.
Is there no oxygen inside your tinfoil hat?
Quote: rdw4potusIs there no oxygen inside your tinfoil hat?
Is their not enough cyanide in the KoolAid
you're drinking?
Life and health are a human right and shouldn't be dependent on how rich you are. The NHS prioritises by need, the US health system seems to prioritise by the wealth of the patient which is wrong is my opinion.
Quote: estebanreyI also don't understand why the word 'socialism' is used as an pejorative word in the States either; where I'm from it's just a political viewpoint you can either agree or disagree with. Nor is it an all or nothing like a lot of [paranoid] Americans seem to be (from reading this thread), you can have 'soccialised' healthcare alongside private healthcare, nor does having national healthcare mean you're suddenly going to turn into communist China.
Fear is the only device by which they have any chance in hell of winning the argument, so they try to use it.
Quote: DocOn Medicare and on the private insurance programs that I am familiar with, the fact that those programs won't pay the full amount charged by the service provider does not mean that the provider has to accept what the programs will pay. If the provider doesn't agree to accept the reduced amount, they just say so and collect from the patient. Most every time I see a physician (I don't use a chiropractor), I sign an agreement to pay whatever my insurance doesn't pay. Under the new program, is the provider required to accept the lower amount that might be offered for their services, or is it still the provider's choice?
Doc.... you know that if you accept Medicare you only get paid 80% of the fee from the government and have to go after the remaining 20% from the patient... If you accept Medicaid, which now pays me FOURTEEN PERCENT of what real insurance pays, you are legally prevented from billing the difference. The same holds true for other government run 'insurances', like No Fault and Workman's Comp. They pay me around 30% of what real insurance pays, and I am forbidden from billing the patient the difference.
As far as the main premise of this thread, a good physician always gets that information from a patient, as there are significant differences amongst races (high blood pressure, kidney disease) and religions (Tay sachs), and even hair color (redheads and anesthesia requirement). Whether that information should be 'centralized' by the federal government is obviously up for debate.
Medicare (essentially the Federal Government) has over the past few years 'encouraged' us to keep certain data on things we do, like timing of antibiotics, use of a patient warming device, etc.. and if we hit certain benchmarks we would get a 'bonus' from medicare. The 'bonus' was so low it was laughable (around $100 per anesthesiologist per YEAR) and the secretarial requirement was around one full time equivalent, so it would cost around $35,000 to get or 12 $100 bonuses. Of course now the Feds have switched it around.... there is no bonus.... but there is a PENALTY if you don't provide them with the data....
Quote: rdw4potusWhy would your wife's private insurance company pay pennies on the dollar? Even if the government were eventually to be involved in the payments between your wife's chiro and her private insurer (it isn't), wouldn't that probably only happen after Obamacare actually takes effect in 2 years?
Parts of "Obamacare" already are in effect, the more costly aspects were carefully planned to not take effect until after the election. The part that everyone seemed to agree with, the coverage of children to age 26, has already taken place.
I received a letter from our hospital from CMS (The Feds) that warned against 'upcoding'. This letter was sent because as practices now start using an EMR (Electronic Medical Record) it was noticed how much larger the bills being sent to Medicare are. Since every diagnosis is now easily found in the computer and they are less likely to be missed by a secretary scouring a large paper chart, the EMR technology has allowed doctors and hospitals to miss far fewer diagnosis so they are billing for them. And the Feds, who have trumpeted the 'cost savings' of EMR, now are of course noticing after the fact how much MORE it will be costing the Feds...
Quote: SOOPOO
Doc.... you know that if you accept Medicare you only get paid 80% of the fee from the government and have to go after the remaining 20% from the patient...
Is that different from how private insurance plans work? Most of those don't cover 100% of costs either.
Quote: SOOPOOhow much MORE it will be costing the Feds Taxpayers...
FTFY:-)
Quote: rdw4potusIs that different from how private insurance plans work? Most of those don't cover 100% of costs either.
It depends.... for big ticket items (like me!) most insurance companies pay me in full, and a small percentage require a copay. But, the percentage of 'copay' type plans is increasing....
