Posted on 12/09/2013 1:14:33 PM PST by tobyhill
At Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, the push is on to get patients insured under Obamacare plans.
Since Thanksgiving, there's been a line outside of the hospital's enrollment center every morning when the doors open at 7. With the HealthCare.gov website now working better, the hospital is helping more than 100 people a day look over and enroll in plans.
"We've reached out to 22,000 of our patients," said Marian Morrow, Parkland's patient financial service manager, in the crowded enrollment office.
In 2012, Parkland provided $685 million in uncompensated care for its mostly uninsured patient population and for those who are underinsured. Yet under the Affordable Care Act, the hospital could still find itself in the red next year.
"About a third of our revenue comes from federal payments," said Ted Shaw, Parkland's interim chief financial officer. "If we don't have those revenues, we can't fund the programs they support."
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Yet, last month HHS officials strongly discouraged hospitals from trying to pay their patients' premiums, saying it could create an uneven playing field among providers, warning that the health department would take action against such payments. Parkland has since abandoned its premium-support plan.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
So set up a non-profit to take public donations to do the same.
If someone can afford the $6500 deductible then they could also pay cash for most procedures anyway and they could also negotiate a lower price.
Insurance has out-priced its usefulness in easily 90% of all medical needs. Not many people go through $10,000 worth of medical procedures a year and less than 1% ever went through the lifetime insurance cap of usually about a million.
Even if a person racked up $100,000 in bills, the government will only reimburse for 40% of that but if that same person payed $500 a month for 10 the hospital recouped 60% of the bill.
I’m thinking the way to go is concierege with a mutual insurance co. set up to lay off accidental injury.
I doubt that the second part is legal. The government would call it medical insurance, and every state would have to approve it separately.
On the other hand, there would be a market for a concierge medicine exchange, or a cash doc exchange. It would beat Craigslist or word of mouth. Any database guys want to try it?
Do it offshore with some bitcoin clone.
Believe me, we Dallas County taxpayers increasingly take it in the wallet. I was shocked to get my Hospital District property tax this year.
WTF is that?
Somehow associated with no Income Tax?
In Texas, Property Taxes are paid to individual districts (county, school, city, fire, road, hospital, sanitation, etc.) Dallas County has a Parkland Hospital District which taxes separately. Other than school taxes, it was the next largest property tax I had to pay this year.
Some states, like Texas and Missouri, tax each district individually. Almost all other states have these taxes built into one consolidated tax rate that is then distributed to individual city, town, school, special district. It is just not as apparent in states like Florida or the Carolinas. Keeping track of all property taxing jurisdictions across the nation is part of what I do at the company where I work.
And yes, one reason that taxes are high in Texas is because there is no income tax. And we are able to see exactly where our tax dollars are going.
see post #11
calif used to have hospital districts too
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