Brickbat: You Are Sick

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department inspector general found that companies selling Medicare Advantage policies had added diagnoses not supported by the customer's medical records in 99.3 percent of the cases it examined. The federal government pays these companies based on a risk score for each customer. The more medical problems the customer has, the higher the payment. The report found that the added diagnoses resulted in the companies getting an extra $6.7 billion in payments from the government.

Comments

[Jerryskids]

But I’m coughing and got a scratchy throat and my foot hurts, it must be the coronavirus!

[Rat on a train]

Coronavirus, gout, plus a few others I’ve seen in commercials. Here’s some Ibuprofin. Next.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The agency agreed with the report’s recommendations for increased oversight and audits.

[Adans smith]

We need a blue ribbon panel , stat.

[Don't look at me!]

We need a blue ribbon panel more funding , stat.

[Eddy]

And more training.

[Rat on a train]

Centralized in a quality resort location.

[darkflame]

So these companies are going to be forced to pay the money back, along with interest, right? Right?

[Adans smith]

Ah, that’s so cute.

[Longtobefree]

And the doctors and staff are going to lose their licenses and forfeit their pensions, and have to rep[at the student loans anyway, right? Right? During the internment (we have to supply our own camps, no less) I got bored and actually read the “visit report” that pops up on the providers secure (?) web site a day or two after each visit. Now, as an official old fart I have the usual ex-office-worker conditions, and by visits are merely required to get prescriptions renewed so I can go on living. I spend a few minutes with a clerk in a white coat who never looks at me, justs ask questions from a laptop and keys in the answers, then about 4 minutes with a senior clerk in a white coat who actually glances up from the laptop from time to time. Then the senior clerk ask how I am, am I sleeping well, do I have any new complaints. No one is actually a medical doctor. The visit review however, lists about six or seven diagnostic codes, each followed by some boilerplate about what the feds say I should have been told about each condition. Most of it was never said, and often there are internal conflicts; such as one sentence says to check in 3 months, another say 6 months. There are statements we talked about things never discussed and all that jazz. I am pretty sure these visits could all be done by me at home on a web page in 4 minutes. All I really need is prescriptions renewed.

[darkflame]

It’s a fucking joke.

[SQRLSY One]

From what I hear, old ladies whose husbands, boyfriends, or gigolos wear dentures, are often diagnosed for, and then over-billed for, an operation called a “vaginopseudodentectomy”! This kind of thing eats up WAAAAY too many of our health-care dollars! It eats me up!

[Freddy the Jerk]

You know what’s really eating you up? Alzheimer’s disease.

[SQRLSY One]

Funnier than a hemmerhoid! Who writes your lines?

[R Mac]

And what do you eat up? Shit!

[SQRLSY One]

More moronic than usual! Swallow more smart pills from underneath the rabbit hutch!

[R Mac]

That’s a lot of theft to get away with.

[markm23]

Or it’s a system so complex that no one can fill out all the forms correctly…