There is another pice of the picture here that isn’t being discussed. And that is the way in which the “health insurance industry” had “disconnected the patient with the billing process. Time was when we all paid our doctors and were, in turn, reimbursed by our insurer. In that way, we, the medical consumer knew what was going on financially speaking. But no more. For years the patient hasn’t had anything to do with the financial arrangement between the doctor, the insurer, and in some cases the government.
I don’t know the whole story behind Liberty’ s decision, but I do believe that “their profitability problem” may not all be related to Medicare. They’ve built a business on a model that has at it’s core high returns, and now those returns are dropping in Medicare and so they are being dropped.I hate Obamacare, but in a perverse way (and probably not intended) it’s stirring a pot that needed stirring. You can’t to to an ER for a hangnail an not have it cost five grand! And that’s disgraceful. Everywhere you turn in healthcare, there’s a 10%er taking his cut of the pie, from the “hospital administrator” in his $5,000 suits, to the “traveling nurses” who are knocking down $25k a month while on vacation.
I’d like to know which travel nurse agencies are paying their nurses 25 grand...this nurse wants a piece of that. Some assignments to pay bonuses to work in underserved areas that need RN’s but 25 grand is hardly the rule.