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

To: Lane3 who wrote (7522)	7/14/2009 8:21:27 AM
From: skinowski	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

Y was not covered Odds are that your "provider" didn't know that either. It's been over 3 years since I stopped billing directly, but I remember many examples. Here is one. Running a predominantly geriatric practice, I had to become quite good at treating stasis dermatitis ulcers, diabetic leg sores and wounds, and other such things. Many times those things require time and patience, they need to be cleaned, sometimes debrided, they need antibiotics... The best bandage is the so called Unna boot - simply a roll of gauze soaked in zinc oxide. It works quite well. Not very sophisticated it terms of Internal medicine, but... it works. Anyway, one day we started getting denials - Medicare would only pay for the visit, but not for treating the wound. That was their new policy, retroactive for a few months. I still continued doing exactly the same thing, for free. The only difference was that I would ask those patients who could afford it to go to a surgical supply store and buy supplies. Presently, as a "hospitalist", I often treat the same problems, using the same means - except that the cost to Medicare is several thousand dollars a day. Instead of training docs to do this, and encouraging it, those a-holes cut it. Government healthcare wisdom in action.

To: Lane3 who wrote (7522)	7/14/2009 11:14:04 AM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

"If you have examples of arbitrary denials, I'd be interested" my wife was on hospice for 2 1/2 years.. great while aetna picked up bills then she went on medicare... nine months after after being on medicare they denied hospice care payments. something about a form not being filled out properly or on time. i assume hospice got it straight after tons of paper work. same thing with monitor for pro time.. medicare approves the routine testing for the last year for people who require weekly testing. four months after having the monitor and doing weekly testing.. medicare denies payment says not covered. it is a mess.......... i assume again more paper work to get it straighten out. i got copies of this as medicare wants to know if any questionable charges.. i called hospice and they apologized why i even get a copy.. they said they constantly go through numerous filings at times with medicare to get payments.