Hopkins is dropping CareFirst

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let's be real, the actual crime here is medical providers being asked to cut their reimbursements by 20% every year. What industry cuts their rates every year??

while increasing the price tag to its customers every year.

The US healthcare system is FUBAR. Need to scrap and start over.

[Anonymous]

Hopefully this is a negotiating plea, because open season is coming up.

[Anonymous]

Is there a decent alternative if we do have to switch? Is there any use in calling the BCBS customer care line to complain?

[Anonymous]

This happened earlier - related?

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1067906.page

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there a decent alternative if we do have to switch? Is there any use in calling the BCBS customer care line to complain?

Gonna have to wait until open season. Perhaps Aetna?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let's be real, the actual crime here is medical providers being asked to cut their reimbursements by 20% every year. What industry cuts their rates every year??

Information technology. That’s another industry in a race to the bottom. Year over year, my federal contracts cost less money because we are supposed to find efficiencies. That rarely happens the way the sales people think it does.

[Anonymous]

Maybe we should merge back in with England and use their health care system.

I hate our health care system so much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The letter is a CYA just in case, and also IMO, a way to have the patients put pressure on Carefirst to settle.

+1. It's hard to imagine JHM would be so aggressively expanding in DC and then cut off a huge chunk of feds as well as every non-Kaiser user of DC's ACA exchange. Like, Sibley suddenly out of network for that entire userbase? I can't imagine it would make sense for them.

[Anonymous]

More and more and more PCPs don't even take insurance anymore. This is getting ridiculous.

You can't even see a doc these days for primary care. They are either a) booked full or b) don't even take your insurance.

You are forced now to pay out the ass for concierge care style in order to see a real MD for primary care. Primary care and preventative medicine will now only be accessible for rich people who can afford multiple thousand dollar memberships per year to these pricey models.

F this country.

[Anonymous]

I hear other companies/organizations are dropping BCBS too. Wonder what is happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hear other companies/organizations are dropping BCBS too. Wonder what is happening.

Last year (or maybe a couple years ago) we had Carefirst BCBS and now we have Anthem BCBS.

[Anonymous]

I went to an ent for an appointment/ consult. Just a discussion of symptoms, and he stuck two long cotton swabs up my nostrils to see if that helped my breathing. When I got the explanation of benefits, I saw he had billed 1 cent for each cotton swab (in addition to the regular appointment charge). Then the insurance company agreed to pay for one of them but not the other, so the eob said I owed 1 cent to the doctors office. At the time I thought it was funny, but now I am thinking they might send me to collections!

[Anonymous]

We need a single payer system stat!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:More and more and more PCPs don't even take insurance anymore. This is getting ridiculous.

You can't even see a doc these days for primary care. They are either a) booked full or b) don't even take your insurance.

You are forced now to pay out the ass for concierge care style in order to see a real MD for primary care. Primary care and preventative medicine will now only be accessible for rich people who can afford multiple thousand dollar memberships per year to these pricey models.

F this country.

My family in other major cities have no problems finding pcps who take insurance, or even psychiatrists (not a single one in dc does). THE DIFFERENCE? Here providers can demand you pay out of pocket because people want the extra attention and have the resources. Doctors in Buffalo or Pittsburgh somehow manage to thrive without going concierge.

Insurance companies suck, but doctors are to blame as well. I am not a fan of Amazon, but I hope they put one medicals all over the place so these concierge practices are forced to open up to more people…not just the rich.

[Anonymous]

How were all of you notified? I have CareFirst and several Hopkins providers and have seen nothing. I'm a breast cancer patient.

My employer is switching to Cigna in January and I was really upset but maybe I shouldn't be.