I understand there has been a cyber hack that hasn’t enabled hospitals, pharmacies, private practices, etc. to bill a dollar for Medicaid patients over the past two weeks. Remember this is also coming at a time when the govt. is also only reimbursing 55 - 65% of Medicaid in many cases. As a long-time taxpayer, I completely understand the need for Medicaid, and I have no problem paying for it via taxes. Those who cannot afford health insurance should have adequate access. This seems to be a fairly bipartisan view.
However, how can our government expect hospitals to survive if Uncle Sam only wants to pay 55-65% of the cost to treat these underprivileged patients? Even more shockingly, how can the government just expect hospitals, pharmacies, private practices, etc. to front 100% of Medicaid for at least a 2 week period when the government’s own website gets hacked?
This is ineptitude at its finest. We constantly hear from politicians about how the “healthcare system is broken.” However, I think we know where it is broken…which starts with the government. When they can’t manage a simple website and it goes down for weeks, how can they expect these hospitals and healthcare providers to foot the entire bill? When Medicaid patients are billed, how can they expect to only pay 55%? Yes, the system is certainly broken, but it’s broken because our own government’s practices have broken it.
I understand they try to use Medicaid reimbursements as a bargaining chip, but all that really is doing is using our most vulnerable patients as pawns and collateral to avoid footing the bill - which they may not be able to even afford. When they use these poor patients as pawns, and decide not to foot the bill, low income community hospitals end up going bankrupt, thereby leading to more of the consolidation our government is apparently trying “so hard to avoid.”
As a taxpayer who does not work in the healthcare system, I think it is disgusting that our government uses these poor Medicaid patients as pawns to leverage their own interest (aka not paying bills). They say this is to drive healthcare costs down, but all it does is lead to more BK’s which in turn leads to more consolidation and higher prices for all. Yes, the system is broken but unfortunately it’s the government that’s breaking it…
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