People in hospices are at the end of their life and all they can hope for is to be reasonably comfortable and pain free.
And now Obamacare is denying them even that.
As the article was written, it seems that the original rule -- before they changed it -- was for the hospice to provide ALL the patients' medication out of their own pocket, instead of Medicare paying for it.
Sarah Palin was right — once people are in a hospice, Medicare doesn’t want to pay for anything, let them die, the sooner the better...
In the article it said that the original rule was that Medicare wasn’t going to pay for any medications, let the hospice pick it ups — even such medications to treat pulmonary problems, etc.
“Generously”” “Medicare generally pays drugs for diabetes, heart disease or other chronic conditions still used by hospice patients but not directly related to their terminal illness.”
IOW they don’t want to pay to help say a cancer patient’s cancer meds — once you get ill, they want you to die sooner, rather than later and not even be comfortable.
People didn’t believe how horrible Obamacare is, and this is just the beginning...
I gave up after 2 days on the phone hand off game and contacted Our House/Senate offices and got them to fix it- still took 2 + weeks.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting the article but this seems like a correction to me. Isn’t this to prevent the patient from having to pay a copay out of their pocket for drugs that should be covered under their Medicare hospice benefit?
I’ve worked with many hospice patients and in my opinion they were very free with the pain killers. In fact, I’ve observed what I considered to be euthanasia with morphine several times.
So Obama lied again. Five years ago he said the elderly should get pain pills rather than treatments for their underlying conditions. Now he wants to cut their pain medications.
This article is confusing. At one time, the medicare hospice benefit paid a per diem rate to the provider. The provider was in essence, capitated. The provider was to “live” under the per diem and effectively assume all aspects of care. Capitation was once described as “that’s when they cut your head off.”
Hey ya know Grandma would be better off coughing up and paying for a painkiller!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-dQfb8WQvo
This is the slippery slope Sarah Palin warned us about and is already in operation in a country used as an example of what the libs want for us.
Related article with more info:
U.S. Medicare program scales back hospice drugs restrictions
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3182342/posts
First, what happened was restrictions on hospice patients' Medicare Part D prescriptions were decreased, not increased.
Second, Medicare Part A (hospitalization) is what pays for hospice services.
What does Medicare Part A cover?
Medicare does not pay for long-term care. The only nursing home care Medicare pays for is rehabilitative care. This article has little to do with nursing homes. There is no way someone would be in a Medicare paid for nursing home while on Medicare paid for hospice. However, someone could be in a self-paid or Medicaid paid long-term care facility and require hospice care.
Hospice providers are not the same thing as nursing homes. Someone in a long-term care who is a hospice patient gets their hospice services from a hospice provider. Hospice providers are regulated differently from hospitals and long-term care faciliites That hospice provider may be a subsidiary of the long-term care facility, or it may be separate.
When you are in the hospital, Medicare Part A (not Part D) pays for any prescription drug you get while in the hospital. With hospice, it works the same (both for outpatient hospice and inpatient hospice). The hospice provider bills Medicare for hospice services, which included palliative drugs. Like hospitals, most hospice providers have their own pharmacies which provide these drugs.
Given the level of narcotics used by hospice, I don't think you could even get those from your local CVS using Medicare Part D.
Hospice is end of life care. Once you go into hospice, you are stopping treatment of underlying diseases. Once one chooses for Medicare to pay for their hospice services, Medicare stops paying for curative services.
What appears to have been happening here is some hospice providers were billing Part D for hospice drugs (defined by Medicare). By law, Part D cannot pay for drugs which are paid for by Part A or Part B.
Medicare does limit hospice reimbursement to a certain daily amount, and all palliative drugs come out of that payment. But that is way hospice works under Medicare.
Second, if you are in hospice, you have little need for drugs you would get via Part D, because curative care is discontinued in hospice. Medications for chronic conditions (blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes) generally stop, unless stopping those drugs would cause pain or discomfort. So something tells me these are corner cases.
The parenthetical comment, Medicare "won't pay for pain relief pills" is completely wrong. Pain medications are palliative and are covered by Part A for hospice patients.