Posted by mellow on August 4, 2011, at 17:10:05
In reply to Re: Health Reform + Reducing Meciaire Reembursements, posted by Zyprexa on August 3, 2011, at 21:31:32
I certainly don't want to throw the seniors out to the wolves, but if the government is going to offer Medicare as a benefit they either need to fund it correctly or kill it. At the hospital I work at we run massive deficits on Medicare. For every 1.00 we spend on a Medicare patient the government only pays us back .88 cents. So that .12 cents adds up on a long hospital stay. We are non profit but it is still hard to give state of the art care and pay good wages on those deficits.
The way hospitals make it up is by increasing the bills on privately insured patients who are seeing their out if pocket expense and their premiums go up every year. If the government stayed out of healthcare and let the market dictate price healthcare would be much cheaper. This would be the perfect situation. Medicare recipients, many on fixed incomes, would enter the market for insurance and the insurance companies would have to fight for their business by providing good cheap policies. This would help us all.
Right now the government has a printing press to back up it's insurance claims and they just give the doctors the finger when it comes time to pay up. They are screwing with competition when you take that into account because the private companies don't have the certainty of revenue that the government does. Also the government can pass legislation that changes the whole industry. This gives Medicare an advantage the private companies lack.
I really have no problem with Medicare but they need to pay up if they expect the industry to take care of all of the recipients. A 30% cut is brutal. Why not a 30% cut to the bloated defense budget. For all they are wasting in the middle east they could adequately fund Medicare and not screw up the healthcare industry. But the politicians want their cake and to eat it too. They need to choose.
mellow
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