Doctors Get Stuck with Bills for Deadbeat Obamacare Patients

[Lucille]

To fascist progs, insurance companies are more important than physicians. Great job, progs. You got your insurance mandate, guaranteeing them customers and profit at the point of a government gun, but you Humanitarians with Guillotines attack the physicians who actually provide medical care.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/16/do...ls-for-deadbea

Last year I wrote that Obamacare could leave doctors holding the bag for claims for patients who don't pay their insurance premiums. That's because the law includes a three-month grace period during which health insurers must continue to cover patients who sign up, but don't pay the price of their insurance. If the patients eventually make good, there's no problem. But if patients don't pay the owed premiums, the insurance company has to cover the cost of claims filed during the first month. Providers are stuck with the tab for any claims filed during months two and three.

The piece I wrote last July was theoretical. The notification letter I'm holding in my hand, addressed to my wife's pediatric practice, is reality. And reality costs, in this case, over $600. That's the outstanding balance owed the practice by a patient insured by BlueCross BlueShield of Arizona. It's a balance that my wife might have to eat, or else try to collect herself.

Here's the letter, from which my wife redacted all identifying information before showing it to me.
[...]
The American Medical Association (AMA) has more information about the grace period here, though the letter above covers the high points. Given the potentially high costs providers can face when the insurance coverage they process for patient care turns out to be more of a conditional suggestion than a firm guarantee, the AMA also offers physicians guidance, and urges them to enter into financial agreements with patients who receive subsidized care. The idea is to get them to promise to pay their own bills if they stiff the insurance company.

Of course, those patients promised to pay their insurance companies, too.

[donnay]

*SIGH* SMDH

[presence]

And reality costs, in this case, over $600.

Would probably cost $50 if government mandated education, government mandated testing, government mandated licences and permits, government mandated paperwork, government mandated insurance, government mandated facilities, etc. didn't get their cut.

[torchbearer]

Here is the kicker on the 3 month grace period. If the person waits until the 3rd month, they have to pay 3 months worth of premiums all at once to get their insurance current.
Not one of those people who qualified for subsidized insurance could pay 3 months of premiums at once. Obummercare will prove a tremendous fail.

[jbauer]

So, since we can change insurance for Jan 1. Can I stop paying my premiums Oct 1? Looks like they'll have to cover me?

[Ronin Truth]

My guess is that the bad debts can be written off in taxes against other taxable income and revenue. What a goofy system.

[Brian4Liberty]

Some would say that these failures are all intentional. Some would say it's the crony corporatist leeches finally killing the host. Full socialized medicine coming soon.

[torchbearer]

So, since we can change insurance for Jan 1. Can I stop paying my premiums Oct 1? Looks like they'll have to cover me?

That could be a good strategy. No insurer can deny you coverage. Stop paying in November though- the rules are nuanced. meaning-
You only have coverage for the first two months of non payment. The third month you still have a chance to get current with your policy, but the coverage stops.
Month 4, you are basically dropped until next enrollment.

[torchbearer]

You only need to pay the first 10 months of your premiums to get 12 months of coverage.
Eventually, the health insurers will factor that into the premiums if enough people figure it out.

[navy-vet]

Some would say that these failures are all intentional. Some would say it's the crony corporatist leeches finally killing the host. Full socialized medicine coming soon.

That's exactly what's going on.

[tangent4ronpaul]

They had a hearing yesterday where they admitted that obamacare was a disaster and they were talking about trying to figure out how to fix it.

Also, I'm pretty sure that if you are uninsured for even a single day you get hit with the obamacare tax.

-t

[Lucille]

They're going to "fix" it again? Oh yay. I guess that means we should brace ourselves for things to get much worse.

It's right to be worried about socialized medicine, but I really don't think it's going happen. They shot their wad. There is no money in the banana stand. And after the CF that is Obamacare, and the lack of trust Americans have in the government, I doubt the progs would even attempt it this point. They're not running on repealing O'care and implementing Medicare for All now, which might have helped them if they thought Americans were actually open to it. Not even its proponents think it's gonna happen.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-1...-counter-grift

It can completely implode in a fairly short time frame (say, five years, tops), or we can, by some miracle of political will, get our priorities straight and sweep away all the layers of racketeering with a single-payer system. The evidence in other civilized countries is not so encouraging. England’s National Health Service has degenerated into a two layer system of half-assed soviet-style medicine for the proles and concierge service for the rich. France’s system works more democratically, but the nation is going bankrupt and eventually their health care network will fall apart. The Scandinavian countries have relatively tiny populations. I don’t know, frankly, how the Germans are doing.

Here in the USA, you can make arguments for putting a greater share of public money into a single-payer system. For instance, if we redirected the money spent on our stupid military adventures and closed some of the countless redundant bases we run overseas. That would be a biggie. Given the current choke-hold of the military-industrial complex on our politicians, I wouldn’t expect much traction there.

You can argue that nobody complains about government spending on the highway system, so why should “the people” complain about organizing a medical system that really works? Obviously, there’s no consensus to make that happen. Too many doctors want to drive BMWs. Too many insurance executives and hospital administrators want to make multi-million dollar salaries. Too many lobbyist parasites and lawyers are feeding off that revenue stream. Too many politicians with gold-plated health insurance coverage don’t want to change the current distribution of goodies. End-of-story, as the late Tony Soprano used to say.

It’s the old quandary of fire or ice… which way do you want to go? Since I’m interested in reality-based outcomes, my bet would be on implosion. In any case, several of the other systems that currently support the activities of our society are scheduled for near-term implosion, too. That would be the banking-finance system, the energy supply system, and the industrial agriculture system. As those things wind down or crash, you can be sure that everything connected with them will be affected, so the chance that we could mount a real national health care system is, in my opinion, zero.

The ObamaCare duct-taped system will go down. The big hospitals, HMOs, insurers, pharma companies will all starve and shrivel. Like all things in the emergent new paradigm, they will reorganize on a small and much simpler basis. Everyone will make less money and high-tech medicine will probably dwindle for all but a very few… and for them, only for a while. Eventually, we’ll re-set to local clinic style medicine with far fewer resources, specialties, and miracle cures. There will be a whole lot less aggravation, though, and people may die more peacefully.

Finally, there’s the pathetic American lumpen-public of our day itself, steadily committing suicide en masse by corn byproducts, the three-hundred pounders lumbering down the Wal-Mart aisles in search of the latest designer nacho. What can you do about such a people, except let fate take them where it will?

Besides, the last thing politicians want is to be solely responsibility for their govt-made disasters.

Thus, fascistic rulers have build-in protection against popular reaction that the rulers in a socialist system lack.

That said, hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

[torchbearer]

They had a hearing yesterday where they admitted that obamacare was a disaster and they were talking about trying to figure out how to fix it.

Also, I'm pretty sure that if you are uninsured for even a single day you get hit with the obamacare tax.

-t

Your income level has to be above the poverty level to be taxed for no insurance.

[philipped]

And people are trying to figure out how we are able to see certain people pay $6.50 for medicine that costs $65.00.

[navy-vet]

The "reorganization" that's going on with the VA system right now, is probably another phase of this plan to bring about universal health care.
These people believe that the current infrastructure must be disassembled in order to install a new one.
At least that's how it appears to me.