65 replies to this topic

[pdx5]

How all sorts of doctors/insurance/beneficiaries have been mooching off of medicare is all there to see..it is part of the larger pattern where wannabe capitalists suck govt tits till cows come home and yet barrage govt w/ all kinds of profanities for popular consumption...

If healthcare is a problem, open the doors for asian/latin doctors and allow them to practice...medical costs will plummet....

i dont see any equivalent lobby group like AMA in engineering field..wonder why??

I can email you my ACTUAL statements from Medicare.
Take a look at what the doctor and hospital billed and what the
Medicare approved. I am shocked the doctors still keep me as a
patient and hospitals continue to admit me as a Medicare patient.

Just this summer, I passed out on the golf course from heat stroke.
I was in the emergency room for 2 hours, required no treatment,
recovered on my own and then released.
The hospital bill was $2902
Medicare adjusted it DOWN by $2468, making allowed amount =$434
Medicare paid $309. I owed the rest $125.

Edited by pdx5, 30 September 2013 - 08:55 PM.

[arbman]

Obamacare can actually keep the medicare costs under control which has been one of the largest contributor to the output gap in US, forcing the debt to GDP to grow, perhaps the markets may see it positively eventually. Some bullish thoughts as well, although I expect some more (short) fueling of the markets at this point...

Pick any number of programs for that award.

Why not the defense and the recent wars?

I don't know, just guessing. Maybe they effect the govt spending within the economy differently, military spending is more inflationary and boosts earnings/taxes and the other one is overhead expense for everyone...

[redfoliage2]

Overnight USD/JPY tanking indicates time to SELL risk assets.............

Edited by redfoliage2, 01 October 2013 - 05:44 AM.

[dw85745]

pdx5: Its not just Medicare, it's also insurance company billing adjustments. Hospital shows $5.00 for an aspirin and insurance pays something way less. Would sure like to get into the hospitals books -- my guess is they are using some type of loaded rate (cost item + labor + overhead + profit) for each line item. On the Medicare side, overhead may contain unallowable costs (e.g. money paid to lobbists) which might account for some adjustment by Medicare, but not the large amounts both Medicare and insurance makes to the hospital's bill. I do know insurance is starting to cost shift cost to the consumer. Use to pay a copay for just visits to primary care and specialist. Now they are starting to also have additional co-pays for certain items or services (e.g. if you have an MRI, additional copay). The bigger issue for me is the LACK of ability to track bills between the hospital and insurances "explanation of benefits". About three months ago, spent several days with both the hospital and the insurance company as each uses their own line item billing coding as I could not correlate the insurance's "explanation of benefits" and the amount they say I owed with the hospitals bill. Neither the hospital NOR the insurance could reconcile them on a line item basis either. In fact the insurance companies customer service didn't even recognize the billing codes used on their own "explanation of benefits statement". What I found out was: 1) The hospital uses some medical billing service that has some computer lookup tables that correlate the hospital billing (line by line) with the insurance companies billing line by line. 2) Neither the hospital nor the insurance can make this line by line comparison. 3) There are medical billing codes (if I recall correctly they refer to them as CPT codes) for everything. Similar to UPC (uniform product codes) that are used in by everyone in the medical industry -- except billing!-- not sure who controls these codes my guess is Medicare or HHS. Why everyone is not using them for billing is beyond me! 4) The patient advocate I dealt with in the hospital is as clueless as I am. She indicated she just had a baby (at a different hospital) and had to go through the same thing as I was going though, with a lot of frustration thrown in!. And don't get me started on the help I received from the insurance companies customer service! Should send them all home.

Edited by dw85745, 01 October 2013 - 06:58 AM.

[Zim]

How all sorts of doctors/insurance/beneficiaries have been mooching off of medicare is all there to see..it is part of the larger pattern where wannabe capitalists suck govt tits till cows come home and yet barrage govt w/ all kinds of profanities for popular consumption...

If healthcare is a problem, open the doors for asian/latin doctors and allow them to practice...medical costs will plummet....

i dont see any equivalent lobby group like AMA in engineering field..wonder why??

I can email you my ACTUAL statements from Medicare.
Take a look at what the doctor and hospital billed and what the
Medicare approved. I am shocked the doctors still keep me as a
patient and hospitals continue to admit me as a Medicare patient.

Just this summer, I passed out on the golf course from heat stroke.
I was in the emergency room for 2 hours, required no treatment,
recovered on my own and then released.
The hospital bill was $2902
Medicare adjusted it DOWN by $2468, making allowed amount =$434
Medicare paid $309. I owed the rest $125.

It's no different with private insurance. A few years back I had minor surgery due to an accident. The bill was $5,800. Cigna discount was $5,200. Cigna paid $600 for the surgery, I paid my co-pay $50.

It's all a game and the news channels have fun blaming everyone under the sun.

Best

Bill

[arbman]

Fib, it looks like the beach ball was held under the water for too long and there was some water leaked in it, perhaps if it gets pumped up one more time, it can get a better bounce back up... Both NYSE and Nasdaq summation indices turned down from lower highs, these are sell signals to me...

Edited by arbman, 01 October 2013 - 01:39 PM.