Archive for May, 2009
It is estimated that the number of internists will decline substantially by 2025, and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission indicates finding a new primary physician is becoming more difficult for seniors—meaning that Medicare recipients should begin as early as possible for the best doctor and get established and comfortable with that doctor.
According to MedicareSupplementPlans.com: Many Medicare recipients, are having a difficult time finding a new primary care physician. A 2008 survey conducted by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) found that by 2025 there will not be enough primary care physicians. In addition, an estimate from the American College of Physicians (ACP) that there won’t be enough internists to go around by 2025. Let's add one more issue: the ACP also indicates that current internists are becoming less willing to accept new Medicare patients.
According to Alan Weinstock, an insurance agent at MedicareSupplementPlans.com, many physicians are no longer taking Medicare because reimbursement rates and too much paperwork. With all these trends converging at once, Weinstock believes Medicare recipients need to shop early to find the best doctor—before they turn 65. "It’s traumatic turning 65 and entering an unknown area of new healthcare. So many questions…wondering if you asked the correct ones and were given all the correct facts."
“The impact on seniors of physicians opting out of the Medicare program hasn’t been a serious problem yet,” said Weinstock. “But if large numbers of physicians join the group that is opting out, it may be difficult for seniors to have access to affordable health care.”
This is why it is important for the 40 million Americans who have Medicare insurance or those who will be starting Medicare soon to start early in their hunt for a physician who still accepts Medicare. Many of the physicians who accept Medicare now may not accept new Medicare patients but will still continue to take Medicare as payment for the patients they already have if a good relationship is established. It is equally important that seniors take the time to determine the best Medicare supplement insurance coverage, since Medicare often does not cover all health care costs.
Robert Dowell of Visalia, Calif., understands full well the need to have someone knowledgeable when searching for the best Medicare supplement plan. “It’s traumatic turning 65 and entering an unknown area of new healthcare. So many questions…wondering if you asked the correct ones and were given all the correct facts.” But Dowell found all the answers he needed at MedicareSupplementPlans.com and says that now he “has a clear path on how to control my health needs.”
If you are a Medicare recipient now or will be soon, check with your doctor or a recommended doctor and check with the references in this article so that you will be prepared with a doctor who will accept Medicare benefits as payment for your treatment.
This seems to be a week for special stories that need to be told and need to be heard. There are many stories about problems with Medicare, just as there have been many successes with Medicare, as well. The fact that Medicare is in trouble in various ways is not news. We have been hearing this for decades, yet, it has taken until now - where Medicare is in a crisis - for lawmakers to sit down and really pull up their sleeves and put in the work to try to stabilize not only Medicare, but Social Security and the entire healthcare system.
It doesn't matter who is to blame or how many presidents back contibuted to the mess rather than fix it. For years it has been known that if a pet project needs funding all congress has to do is tap into Medicare or Social Security funds. Lawmakers know it and the public knows it. Just the charges alone for a pill or a pillow show that there should be more control over the system and more regulations between Medicare and the pharmaceutical companies as well as other vendors. Now we are all dealing with the results.
Below is a story I read that shows the results of a system that has been poorly managed - and, at times, not managed at all. I am leaving the story as written, as it speaks for itself. This is why we have to fix the system. There is no alternative.
My Medicare Experience
by jboettner
05/19/2009 01:02:14 PM EST
My father passed away last July 2008. Even though he is gone, I thought people should know about a couple major issues we encountered with Medicare.
First of all, my father was in rehab recovering first from hip replacement surgery, then from revision surgery. When Dad was a few weeks from discharge, he fell down and broke the same injured leg, and extended his recovery time indefinitely.
The problem is under Medicare patients only have 100 days to utilize rehab facilities, once 100 days were exhausted, my father's care immediately jumped to $200/day.
In addition, I found a source of VA medical supplies from a friend who died; we thought we'd ease the burden on Medicare with the second hand supplies.
I was very impressed with the quality of the VA equipment. But Dad's nurse determined that he needed a special pillow for his wheelchair, and the only way he could get the special pillow was to get a Medicare supplied wheelchair. As we found the Medicare wheelchair was not only inferior to the VA wheelchair, but as far as the "special pillow," about the only thing special was the $500 cost!
As we get ready to launch this major effort to reform healthcare, I just thought you should be aware that private industry seems to have also co-opted Medicare.
Apparently there is a 60 day period between medical events required to qualify for another 100 day rehab period. This would have been nice to know, but even if we did I doubt the outcome would've been different.
When we can approve $500 for a pillow when the patient can get it for free, plus deny a free wheelchair from the VA - in better shape and better quality than the one being provided by the facility through Medicare and forced on the patient - this shows why Medicare is in the mess it is in. This hapens thousands of times over. It is time for it to stop
When you have one pot of money and it is finite, it can be hard to split it up in a way that makes everyone happy. Let's take what the government is going through with the budget right now. It would be great if they had unlimited amounts of money, if the automakers and banks weren't in big trouble and if Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security were at least stable.
But the picture isn't that pretty, and the fact that we are in the middle of a recession doesn't help either. Add to that bad mortgages, foreclosures all over the place and handing over money to the banks without an accounting of where it has gone and the picture gets worse.
As to the banks supposedly showing profits recently from the bailouts, take a look at Dr. Martin Weiss’ article, Big bank profits are bogus! Massive public deception! He writes, “Was the bad-debt disease magically cured? Did the economy miraculously turn around? Not quite. In fact, we have overwhelming evidence that the condition of the nation’s banks has deteriorated massively since then.
“How can our trusted authorities be so blatantly deceptive and still keep their jobs? Perhaps you should ask Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Not long ago, for example, he declared that the total losses from the debt crisis would not exceed $100 billion, while conveying the hope that most of those losses could be soon written off. Also around that time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated the losses would be $1 trillion, with only a small percentage written off. The IMF’s latest estimate: $4 trillion in losses, with only one-third of those written off so far. Bernanke’s error factor: He was 4,000 percent off the mark, in a world where 50 percent errors can be lethal.”
And the critics talk of Medicare’s $1 trillion in costs last year to cover 42.5 million seniors. This cost was inflated by the privatized HMOs, PPOs inserted into Medicare along with the rule that Medicare could not bargain with Big Pharma on drug pricing as does Medicaid. These are a few of the negative impacts inflicted on Medicare by the Bush administration and others. In fact, Medicare began in 1964 under Lyndon Johnson as a classic single-payer health insurer. Listen closely, President Obama. It was only later that the privateers were ushered in to gobble up 12.6 percent of its premium revenue for “administration.” What if Medicare got some of that bank bailout money?
Yet the Times reports, “as a result, the administration said, the Medicare fund that pays hospital bills for older Americans is expected to run out of money in 2017, two years sooner than projected last year. The Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2037, four years earlier than predicted, it said.” The question is to whom will that money run out to?
Though there are many priorities here, this is a country that touts taking care of the neediest among us first. "Give me your poor...your huddled masses..." The country was founded on these ideas. All of the rest of this stuff we are dealing with now came later and some of it did not have to come at all.
The new president has said that this is our time, this is the time for change. It seems that he and lawmakers are trying to figure out what to change first and how to do it so that everyone comes out at least somewhat stable. I wouldn't want to be in their position - the president and lawmakers were left with quite a mess to clean up and figure out and it hit them all at once. It doesn't matter who is or was to blame. The blame game can go back decades and waste time that we don't have. It is time to fix things once and for all, and it is time for everyone to stop whining and get the job done.
The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox all had lead articles with regard to a new government report that paints a dire picture of the financial situation of the nation's two largest benefit programs. The recession, of course, has not helped with the already stressed Medicare system, especially the fund for hospital care which will run out of money (purportedly, depending upon who you get your information from) in 2017, two years earlier than the government had predicted a year ago.
The Social Security trust fund is in a bit better shape but will still start spending more money than it receives in 2016 and will be depleted by 2037, four years sooner than projected last year. lawmakers are arguing over whether the country can really afford to expand health insurance coverage, the report sparked calls for the administration to start working on a plan to prevent the two entitlement programs from becoming insolvent.
There is a great deal of work going into the Medicare situation as well as trying to create a similar healthcare system for everyone who does not have health insurance or access to health insurance, to strengthen the Medicare system that definitely needs bolstering and create a health care system that millions of people need.
Lawmakers feel that tax dollars from workers, such as payroll tax, deductions for social security and other funds will be able to help finance all of these ideas. In addition there are some Lawmakers pushing hard to stop subsidizing and just flat-out give banks and othe institutions "bailout money" why not give out less or none at all , for that matter, to fund more of the domestic issues especially. Another idea has been to patner the banks with the insurance companies and help them work together to develop a policy that would be fiscally responsible. If the polcy worked out well, it could very possibly help bolster Medicare and the the vast majority - if not all - of the people in the country that are uninsured.
"The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox all had lead articles with regard to a new government report that paints a dire picture of the financial situation of the nation's two largest benefit programs."" The recession, of course, has not helped with the already stressed Medicare system, especially the fund for hospital care which will run out of money (purportedly, depending upon who you get your information from) in 2017, two years earlier than the government had predicted a year ago.
"The Social Security trust fund is in a little better shape than that, but will still start spending more money than it receives in 2016 and will be depleted by 2037, four years sooner than projected last year.
Lawmakers are arguing over whether the country can really afford to expand health insurance coverage, the report sparked calls for the administration to start working on a plan to prevent the two entitlement programs from becoming insolvent. "
There is a great deal of work going into the Medicare situation as well as trying to create a similar healthcare system for everyone who does not have health insurance or access to health insurance, to strengthen the Medicare system that definitely needs bolstering and create a health care system that millions of people need.
Lawmakers feel that tax dollars from workers, such as payroll tax, deductions for social security and other funds will be able to help finance all of these ideas. In addition there are some Lawmakers pushing hard to stop subsidizing and just flat-out give banks and othe institutions "bailout money" why not give out less or none at all , for that matter, to fund more of the domestic issues especially. Another idea has been to patner the banks with thr insurance companie help them work togethe develop a polcy that would be fiscally responsible. If the polcy worked out well, it could very possibly help bolster Medicare and the the vast majority - if not all - of the people in the country that are uninsured.
There are many other ideas floating around and some are being very seriously lookde at by Lawmakers and the administration, especially when it comes to where revenue from taxes that already exist could be found and used. As the president said in the beginning, this is not going to be easy but we will figure out a way to get through it.
With the healthcare system -including Medicare - being as out of kilter as it is, there have been many suggestions as to how to make it work more efficiently and turn it into a system that can last and help many more people for a long time.
Social Security and Medicare work beautifully for the majority of enrollees and they provide at least some security and medical care to millions of American families who would otherwise go without, especially now in hard economic times.
More and more people are asking President Obama to look into supporting a "single payer'' health plan, assuring universal health care in this country.
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Usually, the single payer is a government agency that provides one-stop health coverage. In contrast, the American system of paying for health care has been called a chaotic maze of health providers, private insurance plans with wide variations in coverage, deductibles, co-pays, and a confusing and frustrating situation for the individuals who need the coverage and are trying to figure it out.
Many lawmakers are saying that an effective way for the U.S. to move toward a single payer plan would be to expand Medicare to everyone. The smart idea in this is that it would not be free. If you are working, some of your taxes could pay for the premium, and there are other ways to offset the expenses.
At present, the White House stated that a single payer system was not acceptable to the Obama administration.at this time
because the goal of the president's health care reform objective was "to cut costs for families that are watching their premiums and their co-payments and their deductibles skyrocket.''
Experts who have compared the various plans say a government-run single payer plan would be less expensive than private insurance. There would be less overhead and no marketing costs and no compulsion to rack up profits.
There are some 47 million people without health insurance -- and thousands more are losing their health benefits with their jobs.
There are a number of proposals being presented in Congress that would provide health insurance coverage for every person in the United States. They would provide all necessary medical care including prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and preventive care, emergency services, as well as dental, mental health, physical therapy, hearing and vision aids and long term care. And though each one is a little different in the details, 6 or 7 of these proposals are for single payer plan.
