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["Lynda" <lurine AT com-pair.net>]

Your mom's lucky, Lynn.  Medicare is rationed and in many, many parts of the 
country people won't be seen by specialists and lots of private practice 
doctors if they have Medicare/Medicaid.  Your mom has a private secondary 
and that probably makes the difference.

As far as Medicaid is concerned, Good Luck finding a doc that takes it. 
Clinics will but most private practiioners won't.  Medicaid pays very little 
for services rendered and it can take upwards to 6-9 months to get paid. 
Specialist will rarely take Medicaid.

Reagan put into place a payment plan for Medicare that cut the legs out from 
under doctors and set limits on all kinds of things -- "x" number of days = 
an acute care stay for a CVA, "x" number of days = an acute care stay for a 
heart attack and so forth and so on.

For three plus years I fought almost daily with Medicare to get the kind of 
treatment and length of stay patients needed.  Further, Medicare has a 
provision that states" if [fill in the blank] can be performed by a 
reasonably competant person" Medicare will not pay for it.  To justify a 
stay for your mother at an acute care hospital, she had to have needed the 
services of an RN (IVs, certain injections, etc.).  When she no longer 
needed that care, length of stay cannot be justified and the patient has to 
be moved to a convo.

Medicaid won't do all the tests and you have to get a TAR inorder to have 
any "serious" testing done.  Medicaid prefers to send a person to a convo 
and not to their home cause they don't want to pay for inhome help.

Good luck if you have a real need to use your Medicaid.  Hopefully you have 
doctors nearby who take it as payment.

Lynda
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we 
are
to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and
servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."  Theordore
Roosevelt, 1918.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lynn Wigglesworth" <lynnw1366 AT hotmail.com>
To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 2:14 PM
Subject: Re: [Homestead] more on DC, more on Obamacare


>  As it is now, the rich have the
> > greatest medical choices, and the services diminish with decreasing
> > income.  For those who have no job or are self employed, they can't
> > afford doctors at all.  It is not right when someone with no insurance
> > is CHARGED a higher fee than someone with insurance.  A fee should be a
> > fee and should be uniform throughout a practice.
>
> I've rarely gone to the doctor, but when I had no health insurance, the
> doctor's office cost only $32, and he gave me enough free samples to treat
> my sinus infection. Of course if I'd had to go into the hospital, I'd be
> bankrupt.
>
> My mother has Medicare, and she gets the best  medical care. They will 
> send
> her for any test they think she needs, keep her in the hospital or rehab
> center as long as they think she needs it, have lots of 
> after-care...nurses
> and therapists come to her house to work with her. It never costs her a 
> cent
> (she also has Blue Cross, which pays out far less than the $200/month she
> pays for it). I don't see how she could get better care, short of hiring a
> live-in doctor. I signed up for Medicaid (so I don't get forced into
> something by Obamacare)...from what I understand, I would get the same
> treatment that my mother gets. So at least the old and the very poor get
> good medical care :-)
>
> Lynn Wigglesworth
> Tioga Co. PA
>
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