“Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.”Then the article prints out the script that will be used.
“To make sure they are not detected, secret shoppers will hide their telephone numbers by blocking caller ID information.”To ensure against identity theft, one of our first lines of defense is a phone number. If a new patient calls with a blocked number then we become suspect of the true intentions of the person calling. In gathering information to make a new patient appointment, a physician’s office will require an address, phone number of home, work and cell, as well as employment status.
“Eleven percent of the doctors will be called a third time. The callers will identify themselves as calling “on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.” They will ask whether the doctors accept private insurance, Medicaid or Medicare, and whether they take “self-pay patients.” The study will note any discrepancies between those answers and the ones given to mystery shoppers.”No reputable physician’s office will give out this information to a stranger. If I received this phone call I would ask for a name and reason for this request, since all physicians taking Medicare or Medicaid have already registered with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, thus this is a scam phone call.
“Federal officials said the initial survey would cost $347,370. …Jennifer Benz, a research scientist at the center, said one purpose of the study was to determine whether the use of mystery shoppers would be a feasible way to track access to primary care in the future.”Ms. Benz, let me save you some time and our government some money. This will not produce the results you are seeking. I can give you your answer for free. There is a shortage of primary care physician’s because the payments from insurance companies, the government included, are too low. In fact, in another posting today, I came across this article which details physicians compensations by category. Family Practice is dead last with a compensation of $178,000. The average compensation of $65.87 from an insurance company to a doctor for a mid-level office visit will not motivate physicians to go into primary care. The compensation has been stagnant for over a decade and it is doubtful that any primary care physician will ever get a raise.
“at least setting temporary statutory restrictions on how much prices may vary for comparable services” in order to “moderate price distortions, without price setting, . . . as a stop-gap until the corrective effects of tiered and limited network products can improve market function.”Eliminating the government speak, it means if medical providers and health insurance companies don't toe the line until Obamacrap kicks in the OAG will make you limit your fees.
"At first prices did go down under the Nixon imposed freeze, but what happened once they were lifted didn't work out so well.So in other words, make promises to get elected and deal with the truth later. Kind of makes you wonder just what the REAL price tag will be for Obamacrap.
No reason to believe the Massachusetts OAG price controls will work out any better.
First, as was true for the OAG’s 2010 report on cost control, the 2011 report was motivated by continued rapid growth in Massachusetts healthcare costs following the enactment of its healthcare reform law in 2006. That cost growth further highlights the “expand coverage now – deal with costs later” philosophy underlying the Massachusetts law and its nationwide descendant, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It also highlights that when “later” arrives, proposed solutions will likely include a heavy dose of additional government controls on private contracting."
"The report vaguely blames that unexplained variation on “dysfunctional” markets. The analysis parallels studies of geographic variation in Medicare spending and associated views that Medicare spending can be cut significantly in high cost regions without any reduction in the quality of care. In contrast to the conclusions of the OAG analysis and much of the Medicare research, substantial uncertainty exists about the extent to which variation in spending across regions or providers that researchers have been unable to explain is in fact attributable to unmeasured differences in patient health and quality of care."Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up.
"The report contains no discussion of the potential (inevitable) adverse effects of price controls. It’s not even clear that limits on “how much prices may vary for comparable services” would help lower costs, as opposed to exerting upward pressure on reimbursement to providers currently receiving relatively low reimbursement. Overall, the price control recommendation seems to come out of Fenway’s short left field."The left field is where the Green Monster resides.
Insurers struggle with business agility and see their legacy IT systems as a hurdle to optimizing customer service and faster time to market for new products and channels
Insurers feel hindered by current technologies in their efforts to deliver efficient customer serviceThere's more, but the bottom line is that, at least for major players, the breath of new tech is breathing heavily down their necks.
In jail, Verone said he skips dinner to avoid too much contact with the other inmates. He's already seen some nurses and is scheduled to see a doctor on Friday. He said he's hoping to receive back and foot surgery, and get the protrusion on his chest treated. Then he plans to spend a few years in jail, before getting out in time to collect Social Security and move to the beach.
The folks in Washington that crafted Obamacare never bothered to read the bill before making it law. Nor did the ask OMB to score all the associated costs of the law.
So now, almost a year and a half later, they are just now discovering a "glitch" in the Affordable Care Act, the one we call Obamacrap.
According to the Washington Post, Obamacrap will cause employers to lay off employees, drop group health insurance and result in millions going on Medicaid.
President Barack Obama's health care law would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed.
The change would affect early retirees: A married couple could have an annual income of about $64,000 and still get Medicaid, said officials who make long-range cost estimates for the Health and Human Services department.
Up to 3 million more people could qualify for Medicaid in 2014 as a result of the anomaly. That's because, in a major change from today, most of their Social Security benefits would no longer be counted as income for determining eligibility. It might be compared to allowing middle-class people to qualify for food stamps.
While $64,000 isn't wealthy for most it is a comfortable wage . . . especially if you can get free health insurance.
But the folks in DC refuse to admit the error of their ways.
“Indeed, administration officials and senior Democratic lawmakers say it’s not a loophole but the result of a well-meaning effort to simplify rules for deciding who will get help with insurance costs under the new health care law. Instead of a hodgepodge of rules, there will be one national policy.”
Not a loophole, we PLANNED it this way . . .
Right.
So why are we just now learning of this?
Perhaps someone finally got around to READING the bill.
the law to do something in the four years between passage and implementation. So they created a host of early benefits: modest, high-polling ideas like letting kids stay on the parents’ health plans until they turned 26 and eliminating lifetime caps on coverage and ending discrimination against kids with preexisting conditions.
But the health-care market works the way it does for a reason. Insurers set those caps because if they don’t, people who know they’ll have huge lifetime expenses buy insurance and people who know they won’t have huge lifetime expenses don’t.
They discriminate against kids with preexisting conditions because if they don’t, parents who know their kids are sick will sign them up in greater numbers than parents who are pretty sure their kids are healthy. You can change that by changing the whole insurance market, and the Affordable Care Act does that, telling insurers they can no longer discriminate and individuals that they can no longer wait till they’re sick to buy insurance. But it doesn’t do that until 2014.
In the absence of bill’s real reforms — which are, incidentally, projected to lower premiums
House Republicans promptly asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate. The results of that investigation were released yesterday. The bottom line? There’s been no evident favoritism. The administration has greenlighted 95 percent of the requests for waivers,
