After reading through the various headlines in your comprehensive coverage of
important news for October 20,2019, the following quote from an article just posted in The Intercept came to mind:
“Just as we had long taken for granted the stability of the planet, we have likewise taken for granted the stability of the human species.” -- Bill McKibben
Read more:
The InterceptOctober 19 2019, 6:00 a.m.
By Murtaza Hussain
Agelbert NOTE: Surly, I was at the MyMedicare.gov web site looking over supplemental plans and costs. I have Medicare part A and B. I also have Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) Self Plus One health insurance, so Carmen and I are pretty well covered.
That said, BCBS raises their premium much more than the U.S. Government published inflation rate
every single year.
So, around this time each year, I check to see if there is a way I can pay less per month.
I went through the costs of various hospital episodes a Medicare participant might have to go through and pay through the nose for. I was not happy with their numbers, even if they are far below the mind traumatizing $100,000 plus charges some people have incurred from brief hospital stays.
They asked me to take a survey and I did. The web site is satisfactory in that you can find, without much effort, the answers they provide to coverage specifics. However, it has a serious flaw.
At the end of the survey they asked about what they could do to improve. So, I told them, in my typical polite way.
Enjoy:
"How can we improve Medicare.gov?"
Ocrober 20, 2019
Educate people about the average costs a person on Medicare must pay out of pocket for ER visits and/or inpatient hospital stays. IOW, be dollars and cents explicit about costs NOT covered by Medicare.
Anyone can see that supplemental health insurance must be paid in advance to keep a person on Medicare, who is increasingly subject to hospitalization, out of the poorhouse.
You need to be very specific about what those supplemental plans (e.g. Medigap, etc.) cover in comparison to the premiums they charge. Your boilerplate explanation of who pays what for a $24,000 heart attack episode at a hospital, along with the average total cost for heart failure, hip or knee replacement and so on, is not specific enough. I'm sure the lawyers like it (and probably crafted it for you), which means it is useless for a person on Medicare trying to estimate hospitalization costs not covered.
I suggest you give examples of a 10, 20 30, on up to 120 day stay in a hospital detailing the costs of what Medicare covers and what the most common supplemental health insurance plans cover, item by hospital accounting department listed item. You have that detailed information. It is high time you started sharing it.
The way this program is set up now, instead of putting the responsibility for costs on the hospital when a person exceeds Medicare coverage limits, a patient hospitalized beyond the arbitrary coverage limits is facing bankruptcy. The hospital has an INCENTIVE (see: moral hazard) to keep a patient there as long as possible, instead of striving to get them healthy as soon as possible. This is WRONG. Hospitals are supposed to be about taking care of people, not gouging them for extra profit. On top of the physical trauma a person hospitalized has, they and their loved ones are being arbitrarily saddled with the mental trauma of potentially skyrocketing hospital costs.
Don't tell me the hospital administrators, accountants, assorted bean counters, doctors, nurses, drug companies and "health" insurance corporations are "suffering" from high hospital costs. Medicare participants are the ones suffering from hospital greed, not hospital "needs". The government should be cracking down on "administrative" costs corruption in hospitals, instead of looking the other way as they raise their "costs" annually at MULTIPLES of the U.S. Government published inflation rate.
It is not your job to champion supplemental health insurance plans that exist for the specific purpose of profiting off of elderly Medicare participants frightened into paying for them, often by sacrificing adequate nutrition. Yes, that is exactly what you are doing when you calmly throw a cost figure like $24,000 for a brief hospitalization at the average American.
Your job is let people know, in no uncertain terms, what those supplemental plans will cost them COMPARED, dollar for dollar, with the coverage they provide.
PLease do your job.