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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (6490)	3/25/2009 11:38:26 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I don't think there's anything wrong with having the government make the payments. The feds are really good at sending out checks. They send out bazillions of them without a hiccup. It's having the government making decisions on coverage and pricing that's the problem. Well, if we just want to farm out cutting the checks to the government I guess I'd be okay with it. Actually, they don't even cut checks anymore -- it is all handled by EFT. In fact, there is no substantial savings to be had in the processing of payments. We file claims electronically. We receive payments electronically. We post the payments to the patient's account electronically. The reimbursement process is literally untouched by human hands for many clinics in this day. As you say, the problem is that having them making decisions on pricing, coverage, etc., is a disaster. But this is what RW is talking about, not merely making the payments. The "savings" he's referring to is a savings gained by the government cramming fee schedules down the throats of providers. There are almost no physician practices today that could survive on a Medicare fee schedule. They just couldn't do it. If all you have is Medicare paying you, there isn't enough money to even cover fixed operating overhead in a provider's office. While I know less about the hospital environment, I believe this would be a fair statement about them, as well. I don't think most people who understand the process would anticipate a Single Government Payer system being a good thing. SGP is a rallying cry for a certain segment of the population, but when one looks objectively at it, it is clearly not a viable alternative if one wants to maintain any reasonable level of health care in this country.