Quote:
Originally Posted by john1975
It's not a terrible idea, but there's still many problems with medicare and medicare abuse. Doctors still get a boner when they find out their patient has medicare...since they know (medicare) accepts almost anything...so they can go ahead and charge whatever $ price they want.
To a doctor's mind...when it's the taxpayers paying for it (medicare) , they know there's less oversight and responsibility...so they know they have the green light....and less chance of denial...if their ordering expensive tests for a patient like MRI's , etc..
But also means more of a tab for all us taxpayers.
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Do you have any real experience with Medicare? Sure, there are abuses and overcharges, but often not by doctors. There are actually a lot of doctors who will not accept Medicare patients because Medicare pays them less than regular insurance does. Medicare also requires pre-authorization for many things and can be slow and a pain in the ass to deal with.
The people who are making a killing from Medicare are the people that provide physical goods. My mom is 76 and has some health issues. She needed an adjustable bed (like a hospital bed). It was $7,500 and is basically just a metal frame with a motor and remote. The mattress that came with it was just a piece of foam. To get the better mattress, which Medicare paid for after my mom's doctor wrote a prescription, was another $1,200.
To give you an example of how much more these prices are than retail, you can buy a comparable bed from various other places for about $2000-$2,500 and you can get a similar mattress online at places like Amazon for about $250.