Expanding medicaid

[MikeWaters]

I heard on the radio last night that the Senate is thinking of expanding Medicaid eligibility to all families that are 300% of poverty.

Which is a family income of more than 60k.

Anyone that loses their private insurance and gets medicaid instead--what a nightmare that will be. NIGHTMARE.

I've got a feeling we are going to have a real fiasco on our hands. As in a true disaster.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

I heard on the radio last night that the Senate is thinking of expanding Medicaid eligibility to all families that are 300% of poverty.

Which is a family income of more than 60k.

Anyone that loses their private insurance and gets medicaid instead--what a nightmare that will be. NIGHTMARE.

I've got a feeling we are going to have a real fiasco on our hands. As in a true disaster.

So we're engaged in the greatest modern financial disaster of modern times, and we're embarking to make it worse through health care.

I just saw Obama say we need to spend ourselves out of the quagmire. Wow what logic and he says we avoided a depression. Really? By what magic logic does he come to that conclusion?

[MikeWaters]

The problem with medicaid is that it pays so little that no doctor / dentist wants to take it.

So these patients have "insurance" but they can't actually find doctors to take care of their illnesses.

The doctors don't want to take on patients for whom a visit actually leads to a financial loss, as in losing money every time you see a medicaid patient.

So it's actually a case of private insurance subsidizing medicaid.

Medicaid is better than nothing. But it sucks compared to private insurance.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

The problem with medicaid is that it pays so little that no doctor / dentist wants to take it.

So these patients have "insurance" but they can't actually find doctors to take care of their illnesses.

The doctors don't want to take on patients for whom a visit actually leads to a financial loss, as in losing money every time you see a medicaid patient.

So it's actually a case of private insurance subsidizing medicaid.

Medicaid is better than nothing. But it sucks compared to private insurance.

Medicaid has many problems including the rate of pay to providers.

Among others, not in any particular order, Medicaid's timeliness of pay. Part of this is the disorganization of the local states in administering claims. Medicare was not always as efficient as it now can be. Setting up a Medicare payment stream can be a bit of a pain but once you get the glitches ironed out, you get paid within 21 days. In Nevada, depending upon the time, it may take six months or never.

Denial of claims is notorious. We've had several lawsuits where the claims adjuster routinely denied claims simply to delay payment. I've seen multiple properly filed claims where proof has been provided but the payer's representative basically trashed the claim in order to deny it. One the problems is states run out of money after a certain time period so they withhold payment in order to make it to the next fiscal year.

Patients complicate the mess because many of them are so ignorant they refuse to do the necessary paperwork to ensure qualifying for the program.

I have NO faith the federal government can have a government program run efficiently. The current morass is not good but who believes for an instant the feds can get it right? Not I.