To those who mocked Palin when she talked about "death panels"

[scottw]

Why would a government health care program (e.g. Medicare) deny more claims than private insurers?

"According to the American Medical Association’s National Health Insurer Report Card for 2008, the government’s health plan, Medicare, denied medical claims at nearly double the average for private insurers: Medicare denied 6.85% of claims. The highest private insurance denier was Aetna @ 6.8%, followed by Anthem Blue Cross @ 3.44, with an average denial rate of medical claims by private insurers of 3.88%

In its 2009 National Health Insurer Report Card, the AMA reports that Medicare denied only 4% of claims—a big improvement, but outpaced better still by the private insurers. The prior year’s high private denier, Aetna, reduced denials to 1.81%—an astounding 75% improvement—with similar declines by all other private insurers, to average only 2.79%."

just sayin'

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by scottw

Why would a government health care program (e.g. Medicare) deny more claims than private insurers?

"According to the American Medical Association’s National Health Insurer Report Card for 2008, the government’s health plan, Medicare, denied medical claims at nearly double the average for private insurers: Medicare denied 6.85% of claims. The highest private insurance denier was Aetna @ 6.8%, followed by Anthem Blue Cross @ 3.44, with an average denial rate of medical claims by private insurers of 3.88%

In its 2009 National Health Insurer Report Card, the AMA reports that Medicare denied only 4% of claims—a big improvement, but outpaced better still by the private insurers. The prior year’s high private denier, Aetna, reduced denials to 1.81%—an astounding 75% improvement—with similar declines by all other private insurers, to average only 2.79%."

just sayin'

Thank you Scott W!

Likwid, rirockhound, this is game, set & match. Ask any fair-minded doctor which payer is more likely to pay out, and which is more likely to balk at payment...medicare/medicaid, or private insurers. Why do you think that more and more doctors refuse to accept medicare/medicais patients? Because the docs lose money on those folks.

If you'd put down your Obama worshipping glasses for 2 seconds and look at this objectively, it would be cclear.

Put the word "public" in front of ANYTHING, and it implies something that is dirty, ineffective, dysfunctional, and scary. "Public" parks, schools, golf courses, rest rooms, just name it.

[scottw]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

Thank you Scott W!


Put the word "public" in front of ANYTHING, and it implies something that is dirty, ineffective, dysfunctional, and scary. "Public" parks, schools, golf courses, rest rooms, just name it.

public transit, public sector unions, public housing, public enemies...some would argue that they are all simply underfunded otherwise they'd be "utopia"

[scottw]

UTOPIA

Report: British National HC Increasingly Turning Its Back on KidsPosted on December 14, 2010

Ruby Own is a three-year-old British girl with a big smile. But when she was stricken with brain cancer, that smile got weaker and weaker. Similar smiles faded from her parents’ faces when British doctors, part of its socialized medicine system called NHS, told her there was nothing they could for the Ruby.

Couldn’t, or wouldn’t? That‘s the question London’s Daily Mail asks in an extensive article showing how Ruby and others have been “abandoned” by NHS. Luckily, there’s the U.S. Ruby’s parents raised enough money for her to get treatment in Indiana, and the young girl is now cancer free.

From the Mail:

Ruby is just one of a number of cancer-stricken children who have been effectively abandoned by the NHS, leaving their parents to strive against the odds to raise huge sums to fund life-saving specialist care abroad.

Only yesterday, the Mail revealed how John and Vicky Inglis, from York, raised £400,000 to save their five-year-old son Jamie’s life with a pioneering American cancer therapy. They were convinced his chances would be impossibly low if his treatment was left to the NHS.

It is a shameful reflection on our health care service. And, says Peter Bone, a Tory MP campaigning on behalf of such parents, it’s sadly all too typical of an NHS that has an ‘appalling record’ of not taking up new treatments that are adopted far more quickly in other countries.

But what is even more #^&disturbing is that NHS funding may actually be available to give children these kinds of life-saving care. Some of the treatments are available as part of clinical trials here, while in other cases the NHS pays for children to be treated in Europe and the U.S.

Nevertheless, children often miss out: #^&parents say their youngsters get labelled as too ill to receive specialist care in clinical trials for fear of making the treatment’s success rates look too low, or the families simply live in the wrong postcode to get funds for treatment overseas.

Instead, these parents are told there is #^&nothing more that the NHS can do.