August 15, 2012
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So the bill from the anesthesiologist for my eye surgery came in the other day. He charged $801 and an additional $80 for "patient extreme age." (I do think they could have worded that last a bit more diplomatically, but a bit of research tells me that extreme age in medical terms is considered anyone under one year or over 70.) Medicare knocked $705.77 off, and another $80 for "tracking only" - have no idea what that is, but it did away with the "extreme age" charge. They paid the man $76.18, which left $19.05 for me to pay. So for his skill at keeping me alive for an hour while under general anesthetic, he gets paid $95.23. Think about that for a minute. We pay our auto mechanic more than that every time he touches our cars.
Medicare has for a long time knocked down bills from doctors and hospitals, but this is a new extreme. They took over $700 off his $880 bill. How long before doctors and hospitals start refusing Medicare patients, if such is allowed under Obamacare? (It would not surprise me at all if there's a clause somewhere in the 2,200 pages that forbids refusing to treat Medicare patients. They would be fools not to have put something like that in.)
Why are people not seeing where all this is headed? I don't know the details of Paul Ryan's plan to "fix" Medicare, but at least he has a plan. Why can't both parties get together and work on this instead of trying to scare seniors to death? On the other hand, the more seniors who are scared to death, the better for Medicare. Maybe that's the ultimate plan ...
STAY TUNED: The surgeon's bill should be interesting too
Comments (2)
I am afraid we are going to have a shortage of doctors--especially good ones as who wants to spend all that time and money preparing only to make a little bit of money!!My friend's dad is in Canada and it too 2 weeks for him to get the heart surgery he needed and then he almost died. Unfortunately, I think this is what we have to look forward to!
There seems to be a lot of people around here without insurance now. Bill found out he was the only one in his store that bought the insurance policy--and it is not very good but very pricey. We are not to the Medicare or "Extreme Age" yet. LOL!
What's tricky is the amount paid was unreasonably small, but the amount billed was way too high for an hour's work.
The commenter above me is quite right. According to today's Dallas Morning News (the web site), the Dallas county hospital's childbirth unit is short 25 doctors, and there are only half the nurses required.
I don't know. Medical stuff is too expensive for people for pay for individually, but it's too much for Medicare collectively, as well.
As the King of Siam pithily pointed out...it's a puzzlement.
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