Both candidates mentioned plenty of outstanding sums and fees during the Presidential Debate last week. Seeing as how all of these numbers being thrown around are terribly confusing, Jen Christensen puts a number of issues into perspective over at CNN.
Evidently, even though health care recipients are paying more in co-pays, deductibles and other various billing issues, which have been steadily increasing since 2001, the majority of the problem is due to the increase in cost of health care and is not actually due to the current President or even the previous one. Who would have thought? Technology is advancing and the cost to process tests and order scans is subsequently increasing, and by a very large percentage at that. Of course, even though the medicinal field keeps undergoing new scientific discoveries that are being incorporated into new methods of diagnosing patient conditions and furthermore treating said conditions, people just take it for granted that their insurance premiums will not go up.
One of the issues that Obama brought up, which Christensen so thoughtfully mentioned, was the fact that Medicare and Medicaid fraud eat up an enormous portion of the budget and that more should be done to stop it. Looking deeper into the issue over at The New York Times, we can actually see that more is finally being done. "Ninety-one people including doctors, nurses and other medical professionals were charged criminally after an investigation of Medicare fraud that involved $430 million in false billing in seven cities, officials said on Thursday." This astonishing find happened just last week. Reading further, it becomes apparent that another such incident occurred earlier in the year. With everyone so casually taking advantage of the system, the charges on Medicare and Medicaid are practically compounded, adding up to billions.
Hopefully these busts continue and perhaps if they do and fraud becomes less easy to commit, Medicare may be able to decrease its costs in the coming years.
I found this incredibly interesting. I knew that Medicare and Medicaid fraud occurred in our country but I was not aware of just how much and what the consequences of the great amounts of Medicare/Medicaid fraud can bring. Medicare and Medicaid are the basic sources people turn to in order to receive medical coverage. Let’s face the fact that people get sick and injured quite often. There are even instances where people are diagnosed with illnesses where they need treatment for a long period of time if not for a short while. Take for instance cancer patients; they need to be covered for doctor visits, treatments such as chemotherapy and medication. If they are not covered nor have the money to pay for these expenses what would become of them? I would say they’d expire sooner because they won’t be receiving the care they need in order to ensure a longer life.
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense that whomever is president wouldn't have much to do with fraud occurring but I suppose it is important, like you mentioned, that more be done to decrease if not eliminate the times fraud occurs. It was also amazing to me that even doctors and nurses have committed Medicare/Medicaid fraud because they work for hospitals and I would assume they know better. It is good news nonetheless that more has been done to decrease the amount of fraud. If Medicaid and/or Medicare were taken away from us I think we’d see just how much we take for granted in the U.S.
This issue is the most disturbing issue in our Health Care system. Fraud is being committed by many doctors and corporations. The way they do it is as follows: Health Management Company hires a doctor who cannot find a job for a long time after graduating from Haiti Medical School. Then, Management opens a P.C. (professional corporation) on that doctor license..and...they start billing for procedures and treatments, which never actually occurred. After year or two, this P.C. will be closed, and millions of taxpayers dollars will settle in pockets of Managing CEO's. This system unfortunately works for a long time already, and I'm not even sure if this can be prevented somehow.
ReplyDeleteExactly. I was definitely aware of the fraud and I knew that plenty of people take advantage of the system, but it was just astonishing to read that all of those physicians were involved in the scandal. It's depressing; you try to give them the benefit of the doubt, because they worked so hard to get where they are, but everyone's hunger for money is just so insatiable. Definitely disappointed in Americans.
ReplyDeleteI was aware of Medicaid fraud but little did I know about Medicare fraud, especially being that the fraud was happening from the health professionals side. I have been working in a pharmacy for about 3 years now and I see customers with medicaid who clearly do not need it. They always say they're going on vacation every other month or coming in with really expensive cars. I started realizing that it was a lot of money going to waste but I hadn't looked at how it is effecting the country's deficit.
ReplyDeleteThis post was really informative and really helped bring awareness to something I thought I really knew well.
It's so depressing how people can nonchalantly blurt out how they are abusing the system without any fear of repercussions.
ReplyDeleteThat is strange that this would occur, I had no knowledge about this information until now. The scary part is when you mentioned about doctors and nurses would be sent to jail because they were involved with this. What I was mostly interested is how the candidates would be able to solve this problem. When I was reading upon on of the links you provided I noticed that it says that Obama would make a team of physicians/doctors to ask about the patients problem and prevent duplication. In my opinion I thought that would be a good step to solve this problem. Although, in all, I still need to know if this fraud will lessen because if there are news where doctors are even convicted then it worries me on who I can trust.
ReplyDeleteThe sad thing is that this information is readily available, but so many of us are just so uninformed. Before starting on this blog project, I literally had no knowledge of any healthcare issue that we have touched upon thus far.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree, the team of physicians is a great idea, but I'm wondering how much money it will cost to actually implement it.