Study addresses impact of Medicare Part D on medical spending

Medicare part D needs revision with the rest of the so called health care system. Medicare requires supplemental insurance as it covers less and less, the out of pocket expenses for common health care needs have increased at stunning levels year over year for the elderly and disabled.

The current maze and confusion in supplemental coverage leads to abuses of both individuals and government. This is borne out in case after case. WellCare in the SE recently was suspended from offering supplemental coverage as they 1) overcharged the government 2) overcharged individuals 3)denied payment for critical generic drugs like standard heart medications.

WellCare sold supplemental insurance hawking it as a simple solution in this gigantic maze of health care provision. The complicated system of billing makes fraud and abuse of both the patient, institutions and government easy targets.

Insurers have overstepped their roles and failed to provide its core business. They dictate care of patient by denial of services, cost and/or denial of particular Rx medications, some of which do not have suitable generic substitutes. How is it that a personal physician's education, experience and assessment of an INDIVIDUAL can be over-ridden by an insurer who never lays eyes or hands on a person? INSURANCE is a service but not a PROVIDER of the service-increasingly they are inserting themselves into this process. PPO/HMOs are a gigantic failure.

Countless hours are lost in the process of providing care to patients in determining what insurance will pay, doctors and nurses serving as advocates for their patients sometimes with success but increasingly not successful.

The current trend is for large mainstream providers of health care insurance to drop clients should they become critically ill or chronically ill. This is a breech of contract-many of these people paid into the so called insurers for decades only to be abandoned when they needed services-leading to bankruptcy and worse in the collateral damage necessary for profitability.

This is why insurers must be taken out of the equation as they provide little in the way of cost effectiveness to the system overall-they are simply overlord middlemen who want their cut and in the process have cut out well over 50 million people. They rule on fear, they should not be included anymore as insurers have had it all their way and failed.

Standardization of billing would provide a gigantic cost savings annually and rid the system of the never ending paperwork, submission of precerts, etc, etc. that take too much time and effort in attempt to provide standard care to patients. Billing agents outnumber hands on providers in hospitals-this must be reversed. People who think QA is meta analysis need to follow patients from admission to discharge and beyond to discover the problems. Lack of staffing, time for care is the PROBLEM. Nice clean computer modeling/data analysis won't reveal this. Seems there are too many in health care afraid to get their hands dirty or look a patient in the eye.

Co-opting insurers will only produce more abuses, they have proved themselves unworthy of the trust. The cart is before the horse again. Individuals are the victims in this system-not overuse of services. This is an easy way to account for double digit-year over year increases in health care and cost of insurance. The real reason is near monopolistic suppliers of pharmaceuticals, medical equipment to hospitals, supplies that make triple-digit profits on gauze. This is a captured market system, not a competitive or free one. Its led into that all too predictable method of assuring a product will be utilized-old boy methods that are unsustainable and abusive without some sane margins.

Time to get real and look at the OTHER reasons health care spiraled out of control which hasn't been described, golfing buddies get the lions share of public opinion making, lets hear some other voices because these have mold on them and its tough to swallow it.