By Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
Obama’s new bundle of regulations will only increase costs
How much is this going to cost? This is a simple and reasonable question to ask before signing a document stating that you are responsible and will pay any amount not covered by your medical insurance when having a procedure done. Try asking it the next time you have an x-ray (or any other procedure.) A family member of ours did recently when he was experiencing back pain,and when registering,asked the woman working at the radiology company how much an x-ray of the back cost. The x-ray was ordered by his doctor. The woman said she couldn’t tell him the price because it varied and the rate was going to be worked out later with his insurance company. “Can’t you give me a rough idea how much an x-ray of the back costs?” he said. “Isn’t there a set rate for each procedure that I can see?” “No,” she said,“there is no way of knowing the price right now. I’m sorry.”
Just imagine having any other service or purchasing a product and being told you couldn’t know the cost beforehand,although you are required to blindly sign a legally binding contract saying you will pay whatever they later decide to charge you. That’s unethical and ridiculous you’d say. Well,welcome to the American health care system.
Not letting a consumer know the price before a service is performed would not be allowed in any other business except health care. This is a major reason the system and its escalating costs are out of control and so high. Medicare patients are charged one amount,Medicaid another and each private insurance company and individual policies are charged yet another rate for the very same procedure.
As an expert in antitrust and healthcare,Professor Clark Havighurst of Duke University Law School often speaks of restoring the “price tags” to health care. In The Wall Street Journal,Holman W. Jenkins,Jr. wrote regarding Havighurst’s theory:“Now that’s a concept that the public could actually make sense of.”
“The public is not as dumb as it’s made out to be,” says Jenkins. After the public options died in the Senate Finance Committee,Jenkins claims,“What’s left is a package of ‘reforms’ that are mere trite extensions of what we’ve been doing for decades… piling up mandates on private insurers and then lying that this somehow isn’t driving up the cost of health insurance,” and “piling up subsidies for health consumption and then lying that this isn’t responsible for runaway health-care spending.”
The proposal to amend the anti-trust McCarran-Fergusson Act,Professor Havighurst says,leads to no improvement because at the end of bill,it “declares that state regulators would retain authority to engage in ‘information gathering and rate setting.’” It boils down to simple common sense. Havighurst wrote in a 2006 Journal of Health Politics,Policy and Law,“[F]ew things are more foreseeable that that a trade or profession empowered to regulate itself will produce anticompetitive regulations.”
Let’s just follow common sense. Allow health care to act according to the free market,like most other businesses.
Obama should been forthright in sharing with Americans how resources would be allocated if not by price. The left’s single-payer system still won’t allow consumers to have pricing information so some other mechanism with be used to ration care. A common sense approach would require all healthcare providers to post charges in the waiting room. But instead of putting the price tags on health care so consumers could decide instead,Obamacare complicates and adds new layers to an overly complex and monopolistic system. Obama has botched an opportunity for real progress.
President Obama,don’t under estimate the American public. We’re not dummies;we like to use common sense in making decisions for ourselves. Free the marketplace —don’t increase regulations.
Why would anyone think this jackass can add?? OUR money means nothing to this muslim,anti-Americn.
Obama wants us to swallow this bogus healthcare plan…… while not allowing colas for social security recipients,BUT congress awarded themselves the usual automatic salary increase. How do you like them apples?
Of all the years I have been old enough to remember our freedoms and
how the government treated the citizens,I and many friends say the same
thing we have never seen anything like this. Nixon situation happened but he
was a man enough to resign and many of his staff served prison time. We
are learning about the people in the White House and they should be put out
immediately as they are not americans and Obama needs to heed the
peoples wishes. Being a senior citizen on Social Security do not see borrow-
ing money to give us. Many of us have learned how to live when we do not
have it. Although we do not any going to foreign countries or other.
Having served in Lyndon Bogus Johnson's Viet nam war,I have read as much history as I can afford time and money for. During the past 40 plus years since that experience,reading,viewing documentaries etc. I have yet to see any country on this planet experience socialism with out bloodshed,Any time one class of people overthrow another ,the elitists still need a ruling party,round and round she goes,first your money then your clothes!
Health care reform costs will at least double CBO estimates. Who are they kidding?
The beginning of this story is not quite accurate. Xrays,etc.,do have specific prices (I know –I'm a physician and I've seen these price lists for imaging facilities,hospitals and for my own office). Anybody who has gotten an EOB can see what the exact price is –that is a fixed quantity. What changes is what the provider gets paid. For doing the very same skin cancer surgery,I can get reimbursed anywhere from about $30 to $300,depending on whether it is Medicaid,private insurance,etc. My prices don't change –I just get deliberately shortchanged most of the time.
Obamacare is indeed an offensive intrusion into private lives,private doctor/patient relationships and if passed as it currently is envisioned,a recent survey indicated that 45% of physicians would either leave the practice of medicine or retire early. I'm one of these.
I,too,am a physician. Medicare (government run supposedly insurance) created all the current rules,regulations,burdensome paperwork,increased expenses. The insurance companies followed suit and pay at some percentage of Medicare. Overhead when I started was about 25%. It is now 60-75%,if you are careful. As a primary care internal medicine physician in private practice,I am certain I will not be able to stay in practice. My bet is they will capitate and make us be the one to refuse treatments,diagnostic tests etc. Of course,we'll still have the liability for the things we don't diagnose since there is no tort reform. If we provide the basic good care that we currently do,we'll be working for no pay. We'll have no choice but to work for a set (low) salary or retire.
I'm recently retired –a 17-year veteran RN. I have seen MDs start rounds at 05:00-09:00,do office visits until 17:00,then back to the hospital reviewing charts,reassessing patients and then dictating note until 22:00…routinely. It's a pretty special human being who sacrifices so much for so little. Yes,so little! God help us all if peple like"a doc"and "Linda"throw in the towel! The government should keep its bureaucratic,runny nose out of healthcare!!!
Expecting Obama to be transparent with regard to fee schedules is like expecting pigs to grow wings and fly. He promises not to sign any bill that is not cost neutral. But if it doesn't turn out to be possible,he will recover the costs in cutting fraud and waste in Medicare and Medicaid. Why not do that anyhow? True to his narcisstic personality,he doesn't believe we
"commoners"can see through his disingenuousness.
I quote Sam Vaknin:"The narcisstic or psychopathic leader is the culmination and reification of his period,culture and civilization. He is likely to rise to prominence in narssitic societies. The malignant narcissist invents and then projects false,ficticious self for the world to fear or admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with,and this is further exacerbated by the trappings of power. The narcisst's grandiose self-delusion and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience are supported by real-life authority and the narcissist's predilection to surround himself with obsequious sycophants."
In my previous post,I did not state that Sam Vaknin is a PhD. His quote appears in WHISTLEBLOWER,the May 2009 issue entitled,"Narcissist In Chief."My apologies to the author.
When your doctor orders a test,procedure or surgery you can have the medical billing people give you the diagnosis code,the procedure code and the doctor's fee so you can call your insurance company. They have to tell you if they have a contract with your doctor,how much they pay and how much of a cut he/she will take if they're under a provider's contract along with your co-pay. That way you can plan the cost into your budget or decide to forgo if it's elective. Arm yourself with knowledge and be pro-active,but remember,all kinds of things can happen when you're in surgery. Your doctor can find other things that need to be excised,sent to pathology,or other complications can arise and that will add to his fee and your bill. That's the main reason that your scheduled surgery will be pushed back when you're waiting to go in….the patient before you had unseen things that need to be repaired,etc. Check out your itemized statement when you get it and call the hospital and refuse to pay $4 for a bandaid,etc.