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Is this contributing to the high costs in health care?
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Anonymous
| I just read an article urging hospitals to wean off Medicare because Medicare is often a big payor of a hospital's income but pays very little compared to costs. The effect of that is that hospitals charge private-plan patients more to make up for the losses. That in turn leads to more expensive plans for employers etc. And the Medicare pool of patients is only to increase with the retirement of the babyboomers etc. If this is true that more and more of the expense is pushed over to employer-provided plans then a tipping point will soon be reached where it is too expensive to offer healthinsurance for an employer or too expensive for the employee to pay his share. Wouldn't this alone support the argument that wee need a public insurance for everyone? Sorry if this is a ramble. |
Anonymous
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I think what your comments show is that the situation is complex enough that each aspect affects other aspects in ways not always taken into account (or even understood). What that suggests to me is that sooner of later we will need a non-political committee of experts (who are not financially involved, if such people exist) to straighten out whatever comes out of Congress, or to craft a bill if Congress fails to pass one.
Quite possibly, even the wisest, most disinterested, group will need several iterations to get it right. |
Anonymous
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No practice or hospital can survive on medicare. So, yes you are correct OP.
Medicare pays me $10 for putting a central line in a patient, no way could pay the bills with that. The procedure takes 40 minutes total if I get consent and wait for the chest x-ray. If it is complicated, it takes longer.. The hospitals and practitioners get soaked. |
Anonymous
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I've heard the real problem is all those tonsillectomy's doctors are doing instead of allergy diagnosis. The ENTs are the real threat.
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Anonymous
did obama tell you that? |
Anonymous
He did! He is my dear leader. I will support him even if I have to walk off a bridge. Hail Obama! |
Anonymous
LOL! |
Anonymous
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Right. I'm a sociopath, walking down the street, grabbing my kids' classmates and dragging them off to the OR for unnecessary tonsillectomies. I think parents whose kids have had the procedure can weigh in on just how unnecessary it is. . . .
In all honesty, our Academy has put together clinical indicators for tonsillectomy, as well as other frequently performed ENT surgeries. If the patient doesn't meet the criteria, we don't do the procedure. |
Anonymous
| Never mind all the silly PPs, I appreciate the comment from the first two PPs. What I am really getting at is this, everytime someone yells against insurance reform they always bring up people that choose not to be insured and the "illeagals". It really gets my blood boiling because it is so much more than that! But I always try to find a way of dialog and maybe the aforementioned people would discuss the issue I raised: hospitals can't survive on Medicare patients and shift more and more costs to privately insured people. Is that ok or at what point would even anti-reform people say enough is enough? |
Anonymous
Not according to Obama. Apparantly, he said that all kinds of unecessary tonsillectomy's are being done when kids simply have allergies. Obama is now a medical expert...and probably is just as good at that as running the economy. |
Anonymous
He should just sleep at a Holiday Inn and start doing the operations himself. |