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09/16/10(Thu)18:48 No.2307568>>2307376
>>2307436
>You
know about the only organizations that refuse to pay hospitals higher
and higher rates if they know they're full of shit? Medicare and
Medicaid.
Actually, Medicare and Medicaid refuse to pay
"higher and higher rates" on ANYTHING, regardless of how well-proven the
given treatment is.
And in fact, it goes far, far beyond the
feds trying to "stop skyrockimg prices." They refuse to pay anywhere
near the actual cost.
To give you an example of how bad it is,
here's how it works for anesthesia. (And yeah, my dad is an
anesthesiologist.) Medicare first takes the physician's bill for the
anesthesia and says, "Well, we've arbitrarily decided that only 80% of
this bill is an acceptable charge." (Yes, blatant price controls, which
have been proven to fail every time they've ever been used, no matter
the government or industry.)
But that's just the beginning. See, Medicare then takes that 80% AND ONLY PAYS THE DOCTOR 20% OF THAT. Take it or leave it.
The
result, of course, is obvious: Almost all doctors strictly limit the
number of Medicare/Medicaid patients they'll deal with at any given
time, and more and more of them are steadily dropping out of the
Medicare program entirely. After all, if all his other patients are
paying the going rate and his government insurance patients are paying
only 15-18% as much for the exact same treatment, why take on so many of
them that he wouldn't even be able to pay his office staff? |
