Hopefully someone can provide a link to a nonpaywall version of the article. Otherwise, all we know is someone is PO’s after having a doctor’s appt. Dog bites man.
Hennessey is a wimp for not naming and shaming. Points for calling out BS, but still a failing score for him for failing to do anything constructive.
The WSJ still has some heft. He should have gotten off his butt, scheduled an interview with a senior official with some generic language of his own, and then handed it to the official, reading it aloud while recording, and demanding he explain it in plain English.
And ask the Secretary of Health to comment on it as billing fraud.
If Medicare paid for restaurant visits, you would soon see additional charges for things like clean silverware or drinking glasses. There would be multisyllabic words in lengthy paragraphs designed to describe and justify the additional fees.
And the fee creators would spread that word that "the bean-counters" are running the place and forcing the additional fees. Can't always blame "Da ......" (select your favorite group to fill in the dots)
I’m not a spring chicken.
When I was young I remember the stink that occasioned when a couple of docs wanted to buy into a radiology practice.
Now the independent doc has almost gone extinct.
And when an HCP works for a health system, you may be the patient, but that HCP doesn’t work for you.
We need to bring back the independent doc.
That would solve a lot of this bravo sierra.
Yeah, I might have to respond to that from the hospital with something like:
“Please explain your jargonese in something like straightforward English, with simple declarative sentences. To use the language of the young folks, ELI5, please.”
“Once this has been successfully accomplished, then and only then might I think about paying you for - whatever it is you have up to now failed to explain.”
I understand the E/M charge. As someone who lead more than one organization, there are a LOT of overhead expenses not directly related to the medicine, supplies, and doctor’s time. These include support staff, nurses, facility maintenance, equipment, utilities, and insurance just to start. Then there are compliance costs, record keeping, billing, computers, and more.
Never ran a medical facility, but as a businesswoman, I thought of these immediately.
These are not built into the price of services.
My 2 cents.
Last year, I went to our local ER with extreme ear pain and had earwax flushed out. Simple procedure. This ER was in my insurance “network,” or so it appeared. Weeks later, I got an ER bill from a third party for $1300. Apparently, ER services at our hospital are contracted out to this company, which then negotiates with insurance companies. A year later, my insurance company finally settled with this third party. My copay was $250. What a broken system we have.
This is bull shit speak for, “she has Alzheimer’s and is difficult so we charge more.” It is indeed, piffle.
I too am easily irritated. If someone says 2+2=5 I can’t just let it pass as not impacting me. Just about everything eventually impacts all of us and if you follow a logical trail it is so. Someone who says 2+2=5 is not just another harmless blithering idiot. In time he will convince some other blithering idiot that this statement is so and thereby spread his stupidity through the masses and on an on the knock-on effects of a wrong go
So, I too have plenty to be irritated about so I try to stay away from people and things that irritate me. Alas, even I irritate me though for lack of exactitude and unsuitable performance..
It’s just someone p/o’d at healthcare.
No solution. Leftists don’t solve government problems
“make me grab a pitchfork before too long.”
A pitchfork? Like in a 1930s bring out the burger master
There’s no burger sister
You don’t talk to anyone at Medicare
This guy is talking about how his wife is mad at Medicare. She didn’t do anything about it. Never got her money back
Didn’t switch insurance
It will all be AI within a year. They can charge you whatever they want
Make you take whatever they want you to
Writer says he is now a radical
How? He makes no attempt to explain
The complexity captured by The Evaluation and Management add-on is....a likely a newly instated charge required due to the level of jabbed patients.
$200/paient/pop goes a long way in dealing with the new health ‘complexities’ they’re having to deal with, of the jabbed.
I’m surprised they don’t call it a “resort fee” like hotels do or a “shop and materials fee” like mechanics. Those are part of the cost of doing business. Include them in the list price for the service rather than listing one price and then bumping it up with extra fees.
When you know about charges, even an estimate of them, this type of thing is not a problem.
But when you go in for a no-charge visit and come out with a $200 bill my response would be a letter back:
Thank you for your timely response. This visit was a wellness visit and carries no charge according to the ACA. As such, I dispute this fraudulent charge and will be bringing it to the attention of both the insurance commissioner and attorney general of our state.
Thanks you for your kind attention.
I didn’t hear how he resolved this issue, or got some negotiation with a live person. Just his indignance.
These nursing facilities are nothing but profit sucking rip offs, and most don't offer the basic care for the dementia patients living there.
I don't know what the solution is, but I don't want the govt. to control them.
Elderly patients on Medicare are grist for the profit mill. I should know, I’m one. Thankfully, I have sufficient faculties left to know BS when I hear it, and refuse to submit to it. Anthem BC/BS is my provider, and they simply won’t leave me alone. Emails and phone calls all the time. I refuse to be one of those old people obsessed with my healthcare. Our system is designed to generate profits for the system, not make or keep people healthy.
They add it on because Medicare will pay it. It’s gouging, pure and simple.
This happens because a good 90-95% never read the fine print nor ask for a complete explanation of any billing statement.
It’s standard corporate theft tactics.
‘Quidquid commeatus feret’