quote:

ORIGINAL: farglebargle

Keith Olbermann puts them all to shame, tells it like it is, and doesn't talk bullshit about anyone or anything.

quote:

ORIGINAL: farglebargle

Is there anyone else in the thread who sells Practice Management, EHR, and Medical Billing software to the market?

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ORIGINAL: popeye1250

What's the alternative, paying $300 a week to some insurance company?

Geeky, Lou Dobbs is a newscaster on CNN at 6 pm.
He's origionally from Texas, got a degree in Economics from Harvard University.
He has a lot of common sense and there are a growing number of people who would like to see him run for President, me among them.

quote:

ORIGINAL: farglebargle

We need to make it a Federal Crime for Insurance companies to fraudulently deny a properly coded billing submission, and we'll have ALL the money we need to make sure EVERYONE gets appropriate and necessary health care.

Three Trillion Dollars.

quote:

ORIGINAL: farglebargle


The losses occur at the Doctor's offices as they need to pay money to resubmit perfectly proper claims. They waste so much money dicking around getting the insco to pay valid claims, they generally give up and just accept what the insco offers in settlement. Larger practices find it economically to HIRE ONE OR MORE full time employees to negotiate with insurance companies.

The artificial friction caused by this practice of Insurance Companies requiring resubmission of properly filed claims costs us an estimated 3 trillion dollars annually.

quote:

ORIGINAL: popeye1250

I think we need to get the Insurance Cos out of the Health Care business.
Look at all the people whose claims were denied in Hurricane Katrina.
The Insurance Cos will do ANYTHING they can to avoid paying claims.
So, even if you have insurance you could be "un-insured."
Check with your Bank or Mortgage Cos about this as it is a requirement that you have homeowners insurance if you have a mortgage.

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ORIGINAL: caitlyn

There is always two sides to every story fargle ... you have the one as presented by doctors, etc ...

I've been interfacing with the medical profession quite a bit lately. I've been very impressed with the professionalism of nurses, physical and speech therapists, home health aides ... and absolutely unimpressed with the professionalism of just about all the doctors we have had to deal with. I will give you two, of about fifty examples that I can list, that have happened over the past eight months.

1. Arrived at the hospital to meet with a doctor at 5:30 a.m. (the time set by them, supposedly doing his rounds) after the almost two hour drive from where we live, only to have the doctor not show up and not call, or return my call ... BUT, the doctor's office did manage to bill for the time.

2. We wanted to get an x-ray done of a cracked bone on my foster mom, mostly to ease her mind (she took a fall). We had a difficult time getting a doctor's order for our insurance, mostly because the rude jerk's office wouldn't return our calls, emails, etc ... We finally decided to pay out of pocket. It was going to cost us about $400. Two days before the scheduled date, the doctor's order finally came via fax, and we ended up using our insurance to pay for the procedure. They billed our insurance close to 3K, and Tri-Care another $750 ... all for something we were going to get for less than four hundred dollars.

I have no pity for doctors. Without exception, they have been the most unprofessional people I have ever met. As my foster father says ... "If I did my job they way they do their job ... I wouldn't have a job."

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ORIGINAL: amanda1

Hi,
does someone have an idea what his basic malfunction is?

"Healthcare cost are rising for Americans" well doh dude, if you live here, then I am pretty sure it doesn't matter what nationality you have, it's still plain rising.

And "France & Germany aren't providing help in Iraq", stop whining, they warned the G.W. dude up front, now we fly "heros" that got shot up to Ramstein, Germany to get emergency care. Don't want to Germans to allow that? How about you just leave that country altogether and send back the Statue of Liberty and whilst you on it, rewrite the History of Georgetown - god this nonesense is making me sick. I want Freedom fries back and draw a clear line. We broke it, we better deal with it ourselves.
(edited for politeness)

quote:

ORIGINAL: MizSuz

quote:

ORIGINAL: farglebargle

We need to make it a Federal Crime for Insurance companies to fraudulently deny a properly coded billing submission, and we'll have ALL the money we need to make sure EVERYONE gets appropriate and necessary health care.

Three Trillion Dollars.

In less than a year I've had to prequalify three of my medications before my insurance company will fill them.  THREE.  All of them are meds that there are no generic equivalents for, the insurance company just wants my doc to prescribe something in the same 'family' of drugs that's less expensive. 

Never mind that they're psychiatric drugs and that being without them for an extended period may land me in the hospital (which would really be expensive), their bean counters know what meds I should take better than my doctor does.

Why bother going to the doctor?  Just have the insurance company send you whatever they've got handy on a shelf.

Insurance was a good idea, not just medical but other forms as well, but in practice it has fallen way short of what it was designed to do.  Once the government starts requiring something that should be another cog in the capitalist works the end is near.  Of course, lawsuits haven't helped much either.

quote:

ORIGINAL: MizSuz

quote:

ORIGINAL: farglebargle


The losses occur at the Doctor's offices as they need to pay money to resubmit perfectly proper claims. They waste so much money dicking around getting the insco to pay valid claims, they generally give up and just accept what the insco offers in settlement. Larger practices find it economically to HIRE ONE OR MORE full time employees to negotiate with insurance companies.

The artificial friction caused by this practice of Insurance Companies requiring resubmission of properly filed claims costs us an estimated 3 trillion dollars annually.

So, let's institute a slush fund, say for payment into the social security system, and a policy that doctors can submit unresolved claims into said fund.  Once that claim has gone 3 months unresolved then the insurance company has to pay a 1.00 stipend for each unresolved claim in the bucket.  It doesn't matter if it's a legitimate claim or not, if it's unresolved it goes in the bucket and every month another 1.00 per claim is levied against the insurance company.

Give the insurance company an incentive to take care of these outstanding issues and perhaps that 3 trillion dollar annual slush fund will get funneled into something that will benefit society.  Then the insurance companies benefit from holding the cash longer will be minimized, your industry can write more software to keep track of what's been sent to the bucket and the insurance industry will hire more people to process those claims in a timely way. 

Makes perfect sense to me.


Edited to add the last half of the final sentence of the first paragraph.