A COST SHIFT DOESN'T MEAN A SAVING
Today's New York Times repeats the crowing claims by Medicare of how much money it will save by reducing "waste" related to diabetic testing strips through competitive bidding. An hour after reading the Times article I received a call from my supplier of diabetic testing strips telling me how many hundreds of dollars it would cost me, under the rules now laid out by Medicare, to fill my supply and allow me to perform the testing that keeps me from succumbing to the complications of rapidly shifting blood glucose values which mark my day in this time of my serious illness. I have spent countless hours filling out Medicare appeals and requests for reconsideration, entreating my physician to provide data (a costly process in a medical office) but the costs I, my physicians, and the medical system incur are not acknowledged in the bureaucratic self-hyping Medicare release. It is the little folk, the vulnerable folk, who are now bearing the cost of the "saving" which our government is so gleeful about. It's a cost shift - not a saving!
A few months ago I wrote about the diabetic test control solution provided by a large company which was clearly defective. The government sent me no inquiry about this potentially injurious product for which it was paying more than $10 per defective container. I received no notice that the company had self-reported its defective product distributed to diabetics. Strange disconnects
Perhaps our government needs to pay more attention to the business of government and less to Columbian prostitutes and Las Vegas parties. And the question - when taxpayer money is involved - is whether anyone in the system is being paid a bonus or incentive, directly or or indirectly - for savings incurred by cost shifting from Medicare to our sick taxpayers?
Today's New York Times repeats the crowing claims by Medicare of how much money it will save by reducing "waste" related to diabetic testing strips through competitive bidding. An hour after reading the Times article I received a call from my supplier of diabetic testing strips telling me how many hundreds of dollars it would cost me, under the rules now laid out by Medicare, to fill my supply and allow me to perform the testing that keeps me from succumbing to the complications of rapidly shifting blood glucose values which mark my day in this time of my serious illness. I have spent countless hours filling out Medicare appeals and requests for reconsideration, entreating my physician to provide data (a costly process in a medical office) but the costs I, my physicians, and the medical system incur are not acknowledged in the bureaucratic self-hyping Medicare release. It is the little folk, the vulnerable folk, who are now bearing the cost of the "saving" which our government is so gleeful about. It's a cost shift - not a saving!
A few months ago I wrote about the diabetic test control solution provided by a large company which was clearly defective. The government sent me no inquiry about this potentially injurious product for which it was paying more than $10 per defective container. I received no notice that the company had self-reported its defective product distributed to diabetics. Strange disconnects
Perhaps our government needs to pay more attention to the business of government and less to Columbian prostitutes and Las Vegas parties. And the question - when taxpayer money is involved - is whether anyone in the system is being paid a bonus or incentive, directly or or indirectly - for savings incurred by cost shifting from Medicare to our sick taxpayers?
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