MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
By Elizabeth Rosenthal, New York Times, Oct.25, 2014
[....] “How could it be that the doctor was in network and the hospital was in network, but I had to pay separately for the room?” Mr. Boudreau said [....] On maternity wards, new mothers pay for a lactation consultant. An emergency room charges an “activation fee” in addition to its facility charges. Psychologists who have agreed to an insurer’s negotiated rate for neuropsychological testing bill patients an additional $2,000 for an “administration charge.” [....]
Comments
I go to a wound center every week. They just informed me that my health insurance company won't pay them for the supplies they use in bandaging my legs. So they are thinking that they may have to either charge me for them or order the supplies as if I was receiving home care and then have me bring the supplies with me when I come for my weekly appointment. It just seems surreal, the health insurance company pays for the treatment and the doctors but not for the bandages? Isn't that like paying for a meal at a restaurant but in addition being charged for the ingredients?
by MrSmith1 on Wed, 10/29/2014 - 5:06pm
Sorry to hear that it's happening to you.
While it's true that it's the case that there is what some call "rationing" in every health care system, including national health or single payer, (i.e. no that treatment isn't covered, you'd have to pay for it) what's going on now along these lines in the transition to Obamacare just strikes as haphazard, unplanned and just plain crazy. Congress writes a law with a gazillion pages but can't seem to include some kind of plan to prevent this sort of problem. There's just got to be a way for insurers to get enough to cover the basics needed for any service and there's just got to be a way to make greedy providers realize that the party is over and there's just got to be a better way to inform patients ahead of time what they get and don't get for their insurance coverage.
So far all I see is that ACA proving to be a very sloppy law. Yes,big programs take a long time to get right. But where are the fixes? I'm not seeing many, I'm just seeing lots of reports of loopholes being manipulated...
by artappraiser on Wed, 10/29/2014 - 6:17pm