Another Reason to Abhor Socialized Medicine

Medicare is closest thing we gave to Socialized Medicine (SM, an apropos anagram). And like other SM systems out there, it’s becoming more and more uncaring of the patient’s needs.

Medicare will stop paying the costs of treating infections, falls, objects left in surgical patients and other things that happen in hospitals that could have been prevented.

The rule change announced this month is among several initiatives that the administration says are intended to improve the accuracy of Medicare’s payment for hospital patients who receive acute care and to encourage hospitals to improve the quality of their services.

``Medicare payments for inpatient services will be more accurate and better reflect the severity of the patient’s condition,’‘ Herb Kuhn, the acting deputy commissioner of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a statement.

The rule identifies eight conditions - including three serious types of preventable incidents sometimes called ``never events’‘ - that Medicare no longer will pay for.

Those conditions are: objects left in a patient during surgery; blood incompatibility; air embolism; falls; mediastinitis, which is an infection after heart surgery; urinary tract infections from using catheters; pressure ulcers, or bed sores; and vascular infections from using catheters.

Gosh, I feel so thrilled that Hillary or Obama want to give us some kind of heath care plan. I’ll bet it will be just as good as Cuba’s.

I hate SM as much as the next guy, but here I think Medicaid is innocent.

“Hospitals in the future will be expected to pick up the cost of additional treatment required by a preventable condition acquired in the hospital.”

This sounds as if Medicaid is forcing the hospitals to pay for their own errors, thus saving taxpayers money.

Posted by  on  08/18  at  06:12 PM

rockdalian, I think Jim’s point is that if we get SM, they won’t be able to cut costs by shunting them off on the hospitals.
Besides, most of those conditions are not always preventable.

Posted by  on  08/18  at  06:51 PM

Rockdalian ,

Yes, as Toren points out I was talking about more as an example of Socialized medicine. On one hand, they should be saving the tax payers money from abuse.

The problem is, that’s the excuse they will always use to say, cut medical services to smokers, the over weight, etc. As they proposed in England recently. It’s always an incremental thing.

Here’s the problem. We pay them money, often by force, so we can have the services. From their standpoint, their bureaucracy will always grown and need more money to operate, which means they will be forced to cut benefits. So to justify it they will come up with excuses like personal behavior doesn’t justify medical services, etc.

Notice the list of things they are cutting out. It starts with stuff you can’t argue with, then becomes a list of things that can happen as the result of invasive surgery. They do that so you equate one with the other and shrug.

It’s why, before terrorism became a big issues, they tried to get laws allowing wiretaps and email snooping to fight child molesters. Because who would argue with that? But they didn’t get enough consent so 9/11 comes around and now they have carte blance.

Posted by James Hudnall  on  08/19  at  12:48 PM

Hopefully one day we will see some healthcare reform. America’s system is the most expensive, and also one of the worst in the world.

Posted by Angeles  on  08/30  at  06:18 AM

Then why do people come here from all over the world for our health care, including Canadians, Brits and so on? People come here from all the countries Michael Moore praised in Sicko.

It probably is the most expensive, and it shouldn’t be. But it is also the most advanced.

Posted by James Hudnall  on  08/30  at  08:24 AM
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