Between doubling the standard deduction and flattening the brackets our total tax liability was noticeably lower.
Found this interesting. https://www.healthcarefinancenews.c...y-cost-care-outweighs-medicare-reimbursements
We have to ask ourselves why medical cost growth far outpaces inflation. I don't know why it is, but perhaps there are answers out there. Until that is tackled, it is going to be a big uphill climb.
Don’t think there’s a single cause and honestly I’m probably less qualified to discuss it than my employees as I’ve made it my mission to deal with that stuff as little as possible. But that in itself is part of the problem, as whole teams of people are employed just to handle insurance crap. And you need a lot more of these people and hours from them per claim than you would think. Data mailed in is frequently lost. They frequently claim to not have information you know you’ve sent them and then you have to wait on hold for 45 minutes while they verify they do in fact have the information for which they cited a lack of said information as a reason for denial. Now we’ll reprocess and contact you in 60 days. Actually you won’t get contacted and your office will have to stay on top of that and contact them after 60 days and see what new issue needs to be resolved. So something needs to be done about that. The whole process needs to be streamlined and some sort of rules put in place for how these companies operate. It’s not so much rejections, but making you work like a dog for what should be slam dunk approvals (presumably so that a lot of people will just give up and quit seeking reimbursement or preauthorization). Insurance reimbursements will go up (maybe) if your fees go up, assuming other people in your area are also raising their fees. Reimbursement will definitely drop if everyone lowers their fees. No one wants that. That’s a couple of issues in the private world.
I would hate to have to deal with insurance companies to get paid. Do they have a limit on how long they can take to pay a claim?
I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some sort of limit mentioned in the contract, but I’d say there is all kinds of wiggle room provided. Also I’m not sure how you’d go about trying to get them on that.
From my 3 years of dabbling in it, most have time frames on when it can be paid, and the onus is on the provider to stay on their asses about it. Health insurance is the biggest bunch of crooks out there. IMO, it's the most corrupt industry in the history of the US, and I don't think there is a close second. Too many people want to think that solving healthcare is a simple fix, but it would probably require Glass-Segall times 10 to handle everything. And both sides are influenced by them. And on top of that, I'm not certain that fixing the problem wouldn't require a long time to implement as to not cause a meltdown a la 2008.
Going single payer isn’t going to solve it either. Will just add another layer to the mess. It’s crazy how we’ve totally screwed up the health care market. But when the provider and consumer is in the dark on pricing and left to the middle men to hash out. There’s no wonder it’s so expensive.
Way too much time is wasted on AR. I wish they would take a good look at that. You should not have to chase your money around.
There are two year limits from claim date on a lot of them. But yeah, that’s on the provider. Not sure if they have some sort of response time limit. They usually tell you they will contact you in 30 or 60 days. I’d say it’s 50/50 or less whether they actually do contact you.
It might IF about 1,000 other things were taken care of. But just going to single payer thinking that will solve it? No. It won't. Of that I am convinced.
Also, if you are an out of network provider, they won’t tell you what amount they’ll reimburse. They are under no obligation to, so they flat refuse. Which means the uninformed patient has to call (they are obligated to tell them) and after being coached by staff, recite confusing medical and insurance code jargon you’re sure they have no damn clue about. So, in those cases, even though patient says insurance told them they’d cover $X, you are always really concerned that they didn’t fully grasp what was told to them.
We will be dedicating such a large fraction of GDP to healthcare that not fixing it will likely cause a meltdown.