Posted on 02/14/2006 6:37:40 AM PST by Graybeard58
I sure would like to know how they code to get paid for pulse oximetry. I never could, even with "cause."
BTW, those vital signs - and I used the POx as a 6th vital sign - are useful not for just this visit, but for ongoing monitoring. If you come in next time with a substantial change, the change itself is diagnostic.
I was told that because I am a single white male I do not qualify for Medicaid.
That's a little over a million bucks for 65 years of coverage.
I hope you were being sarcastic - I think this is the line the socialists would want you to believe. How about option 3:
People pay for their own health care
People are not reliant on employment for health insurance (a relic from WWII, when wage controls were in place and health insurance was a legitimate perk to attract workers)
Free market conditions set prices for insurance and health care
Dumba** trial lawyers don't get rich from milking the system
It will fail.
We don't have health insurance for a very simple reason.
Can't afford it. I keep meaning to look into "catastrophic" health insurance but keep forgetting. We just try not to get sick!
And we never, ever whine about it.
Options 1 and 2 will fail, too. Making employees expensive will result in making employment opportunities scarce. Having health care as a government - nanny-state - responsibility will result in everyone having the same low level of care. Like in Cuba, where doctors leave medicine to drive taxis - they can earn more.
The only way to lower premiums is to substantially increase the participation of young healthy people. That is not happening now, nor will it ever if given a choice.
I met plenty of people there who refuse to pay it.
Some provinces have no premium so therefore I should not pay anything is the thinking.
For many people the price point is ZERO.
Short Answer:
As logical as this plan seems to you, no doctor in his right mind would likely agree to participate.
First, you could overdose on the narcotic injection; Second, your bowel obstruction MIGHT NOT resolve spontaneously, leading to potential fatal complications, all of which he would be responsible for.
Any physician being requested to do what you suggest would envision his entire family's net worth transferring to your outraged survivors and their trial lawyer attorney.
Take out the adminstrative costs to me of Medicare and Medicaid. They are many. Cutting out the cost of Private Insurance would be easy IF people were honest. They are not anymore. I as a physician could make my patients do all the insurance paper work as it used to be until people started to refuse to pay me first and wait (as I have to do) to get their insurance check or even worse they would get the insurance check and not pay me and keep the check. They made money off of being ill. I had one pregnant woman keep her 1,800 check and never pay me a dime. I filed small claims on her. When she tried to borrow money from the bank about one year later she called crying asking me to do something because her bad debt with me kept her from getting the loan. I played her the smallest fiddle I could over the phone.
They may charge but rarely is anyone paying for pulse oximetry anymore. It is considered part of routine vital signs. We don't even bill for it cause reimbursement is ZERO. Charges and payment in Medical Practice are only marginally connected.
Prices that most doctors charge are higher BECAUSE Medicare and Medicaid do not pay but about 40% of what private insurance pays. If the Government payment was better the charge could be lowered since about 60% of billing is to the Governmnet. Not only do you pay taxes for Medicare and Medicaid you pay more for private insurance because without it physicians would stop practicing and do something else. do you realize Medicare pays a radiologist $4.60 to read a Chest x- ray. Do you consider that adequate????????????
Mandatory car insurance is for the benefit of the insurance industry.Mandatory car insurance and no-fault accident policies both work against the average citizen.The smal portion of the premium I used to pay for uninsured drivers is still there.
The effect of all these mandates is to trap poor people in a catch-22. Without insurance you can't drive,if you can't drive you have a very difficult time getting a job;without a job you afford car insurance.......I also believe housing subsidies drive up the cost of rent so fewer can afford decent housing without subsidies....subsidies only make the apartment owners rich and rob the poor of dignity.Actually,I can't think of anything made better by long-term government subsidies.
Even high deductible, catastrophic insurance is too high. A relative has $2k deductible, hospital only (20/80%) BS/BC insurance. Paying over $200/mo.
Too much $$$.
Seems medical costs just too high. Another relative went to local Emerg Room, stomach illness. Waited for 4 hrs in waiting room (no habla englishes abundant around here), hospital took his insurance card....didn't bother to tell him they didn't accept it....treated him....for $5k for that day.
Guy is a part time student/part time dish washer. CHOMP (spends big bucks on it's community p.r.) sic's a collection agency and legal threats when he protested the bill.
Cmon, they had ethics. Atypical ethics, to be sure, but ethics. They followed the golden rule, "I gotta get me some o' that!"
Not true. Forcing young people to pay a new insurance tax to support older peoples health care is a ponzi scheme that will fail. Deregulate health care and prosecute fraud and limit lawsuit damages and insurance would become unnecessary just like it used to be. Health care is the problem. Insurance just hides it from sight.
I saw my office visit invoices and they added $60 for each pulse ox. I was always a 99.
I'm not a physician, but I'm betting the reason is that they don't think you should be diagnosing yourself and treating yourself with narcotics. The man who is his own physician has a fool for a patient. If things don't resolve as you anticipate, your obstruction could cause a section of bowel to become necrotic. You could die, Greybeard.
Besides, when you're in pain you're in no position to titrate the dose of narcotics. And if this comes up unexpectedly twice every fifteen years, how are you going to keep the correct amount of Demerol or whatever around without having it expire? It's just not safe or practical.
I vote with the doctors. Go to the ER.
It was working successfully for decades. Employers were providing health-care, medical and dental as part of regular benefits. Employers have been withdrawing completely or gradually increasing the employee cost of the benefit over the last 8 yrs, obviously reducing participation. Is it a coincidence that over the same period premium costs have increased exponentially.
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