If you have Blue Cross for your Medicare insurance policy, you may not be able to use it at Sacred Heart Hospital after July 1.

When I first read it I didn't know what to make of it.

If you are confused....just ask....I speak Markle.  It took a bit of time, but advanced google translate will help you.

Bob wrote:

ppaca wrote:"You all have forgotten to than Obamacare."

What the hell is that suppose to mean Markle? No understand.

I think that sentence means "you've all forgotten that obama and obamacare are to blame for everything"  lol

Look,  it could well be that obamacare plays some part in why Sacred Heart wants a 28% increase.  

But,  that aint what caused a local medical provider to try to charge me a bogus bill of eight hundred bucks after they'd already cheated me out of another hundred on a co-pay.

And that aint what caused Sacred Heart to charge me $20,000 for a lousy outpatient biopsy that I'll be paying off for the next seven years.

And it sure as hell doesn't explain why we pay ten bucks for an aspirin or a bandaid.

So there's more to it than obamacare,  markle.  A shitpot more.

I don't believe for a minute you were charged $20,000 for an outpatient biopsy.

We pay $10.00 for an aspirin because all the regulations on who can provide and deliver that aspirin, the records and, most of all, the INSURACE the hospital, doctors and everyone else has to have to cover frivolous lawsuits.

It is now all due to Obamacare. Remember we were promised that insurance costs were going to be less than our cell phone and health care costs would be dropping.

Hey Bob if you have a facebook page go to it and search weartv, there is a good thread going on right now about North Okaloosa Medical Center and Ft Walton Beach medical center being in the top 50 in U.S. for charges. I think the news said at 6 North Okaloosa was no 1 and Ft Walton no 12 in nation. See some of the charges in the thread.

2seaoat wrote:When I first read it I didn't know what to make of it.

If you are confused....just ask....I speak Markle.  It took a bit of time, but advanced google translate will help you.

How much did you have to pay for the Markle Rosetta Stone software?

I have no doubt this is an indirect decision based on the fact Florida did not expand Medicaid and the feds are threatening not to send any money to Florida. So the hospital's are going to take it out on their patients.

Markle wrote:

ppaca wrote:"You all have forgotten to thank Obamacare."

What the hell is that suppose to mean Markle? No understand.

Why do you need profanity to point out a typing error?

I had no idea "hell" was profanity. I am sorry if I offended you with that four letter word I could have used another one.

Markle wrote:

I don't believe for a minute you were charged $20,000 for an outpatient biopsy.

Actually you would be partly right. Initially the bill was $28,000. The $20,000 figure was after the insurance discounts were applied.
Unfortunately, even though I was paying $4400/year for the insurance premium, the insurance company paid less than a thousand dollars toward the claim.
I've been paying $200/month to Sacred Heart since the end of 2013. And I'll be paying that for the next six and a half years.

I put up several lengthy threads about this after it happened, markle, complete with all the details including scans of the bills. I can do that again unless you take back calling me a liar. I don't really want to have to hunt those bills again, but by god I will if it will get you to start listening to something other than that fox news stuff.

Oh and by the way,  markle.  ALL of that happened BEFORE obamacare.
Obamacare didn't go into effect until the following January.  I know because, after that,  I went on obamacare for a month before I was eligible for Medicare in February.

ppaca wrote:I have no doubt this is an indirect decision based on the fact Florida did not expand Medicaid and the feds are threatening not to send any money to Florida. So the hospital's are going to take it out on their patients.

There's a Florida program, I believe for non-profit hospitals, that's going away. Rick Scott and the Florida legislature can't seem to address the problem. The hospitals are not to blame.

True the hospitals are not to blame for what our state legislature's decide or Scott, but it's pretty apparent the hospital's are trying to get it back from the insurance company's. The 28% increase they want is quite steep.

If you looked at one of Bob's attachement you will see this involves every hospital that is Ascension. This has just not happened with them in the past month I have seen several notice's on several hospital's across the state, some they settled at the last minute and one they told to bite the dust and no longer a provider.  In 20 years I have never seen so many notice's, that are private, come through about this many hospital's.

If you a fb page go to it and search for weartv and read the thread on the most expensive hospital's and all the comments.

ppaca reminds me theres one thing all us long-time locals need to keep in mind.

Sacred Heart Hospital used to be something run by a bunch of nuns and a religion.  And the pictures and statutes of nuns and all that are still prominently hanging in all the walkways.  Both indoors and out.  lol

But let's not kid ourselves.  This whole outfit sold out to corporatism a while back.  This is now just a cog in a mega hospital corporation.  lol

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102745435

Some hospitals are marking up treatments by as much as 1,000 percent, a new study finds, and the average U.S. hospital charges uninsured patients three times what Medicare allows.

Twenty of the hospitals in the top 50 when it comes to marking up charges are in Florida, the researchers write in the journal Health Affairs. And three-quarters of them are operated by two Tennessee-based for-profit hospital systems: Community Health Systems and Hospital Corporation of America.

"We just want to raise public awareness of the problem," said Ge Bai of Washington & Lee University in Virginia, an accounting professor who wrote the study along with Gerard Anderson of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The hospital with the highest charges? North Okaloosa Medical Center, about an hour outside Pensacola, Florida. It charges uninsured and out-of-network patients 12.6 times what Medicare allows.
"Because it is difficult for patients to compares prices, market forces fail to constrain hospital charges."
-Ge Bai & Gerard Anderson, Study Authors
"Last year, our organization provided over $3.3 billion in charity care, discounts and other uncompensated care for those who can't afford healthcare services," Community Health Systems said in a statement. "Our hospitals also paid millions of dollars in taxes that help fund critically important services in every community where we operate.

The Federation of American Hospitals, which represents for-profit hospitals, said the study leaves out important facts. "The study does not recognize that the listed hospitals provided nearly $450 million in uncompensated care in 2012 alone," federation CEO Chip Kahn said.

Bai and Anderson acknowledge this, but say it doesn't clear up the underlying questions they raise.

Part of the problem is the convoluted U.S. healthcare system. Medical costs can be paid by private insurance companies, directly by employers, by government-funded systems such as Medicare or Medicaid, and directly by patients. Hospitals negotiate different rates with different payers.

Then there are in-network and out-of-network rates. And patients often don't know until after they've received a treatment whether their insurance will pay for it, or for the doctors who delivered it.

It leads to confusion, and Bai says hospitals are taking unfair advantage of this. "Because it is difficult for patients to compare prices, market forces fail to constrain hospital charges," Bai and Anderson wrote in their report, published in the journal Health Affairs.

"We really want policy makers to read the paper," Bai said. She said she started doing the research when she had a baby and looked at her hospital bills which, luckily, were paid for by her health insurance.

"I looked at the bill and realized I did not understand the bill," Bai told NBC News. "If I, a CPA, did not understand a hospital bill, how can an average American understand it? We understand the bills for all the other assets we buy. We do not understand the bill for our most valuable asset. That is our health."

She and Anderson studied charging policies at more than 4,000 American hospitals. Medicare carefully controls what it reimburses hospitals for treating patients, so they looked at 2012 Medicare data. The top 50 hospitals charged a lot more than that and, not surprisingly, all but one were for-profit hospitals.

"These hospitals have markups (ratios of charges over Medicare-allowable costs) approximately 10 times their Medicare-allowable costs compared to a national average of 3.4," Bai and Anderson wrote.

They explain what that means. "On average, U.S. hospital charges were 3.4 times the Medicare-allowable cost in 2012. In other words, when the hospital incurs $100 of Medicare-allowable costs, the hospital charges $340," they wrote.

But any hospitals mark up prices far, far more than that.

Analysis of the fifty hospitals showed that 49 are for profit (98 percent), 46 are owned by for-profit hospital systems (92 percent), and 20 (40 percent) operate in Florida."

More than half of Americans get their health insurance through employers, who mostly provide private insurance, and these companies usually negotiate payments.

But up to 13 percent of Americans still don't have any health insurance at all, even with the new Obamacare exchanges that help people buy often subsidized insurance with heavy government subsidies.

"While most public and private health insurers do not use hospital charges to set their payment rates, uninsured patients are commonly asked to pay the full charges, and out-of-network patients and casualty and workers' compensation insurers are often expected to pay a large portion of the full charges," Bai and Anderson wrote.

Read MoreDon't mess with Medicaid expansion? A lesson from Texas

This could help explain why health insurance costs have steadily risen, they said. It can also help explain medical bankruptcies. "Hospitals with substantial market power can use the high markups as leverage with private insurers in price negotiations," Bai and Anderson wrote.

Bai alleges these hospitals are taking advantage of the most vulnerable patients. North Okaloosa Medical Center did not return calls from NBC News.

Many hospitals offer discounts.

"Uninsured patients are eligible for free care through our charity care program or they receive our uninsured discounts, which are similar to the discounts a private insurance plan gets," Hospital Corporation of America said in a statement.

"In addition, we were one of the first providers to make detailed pricing information publicly available; we have been providing this information on hospital web sites since 2007."

But Bai said hospitals set their own policies for reduced or charity care and have their own criteria for who is eligible.

"Because we know the financial aspects of healthcare can be confusing, each hospital provides financial counselors to assist our patients and to answer billing and insurance questions," Community Hospitals said in its statement.
Hospitals did not used to mark up their charges so much.

"The increases began in the late 1980s and started to accelerate in 2000," Bai and Anderson wrote. "In 1984 the average charge-to-cost ratio was 1.35. In 2004 and 2011 the average charge-to-cost ratio was 3.07 and 3.30, respectively. The markup in 2012, therefore, represents a 10 percent increase from 2004, and 3 percent increase from 2011."

Hospital executives have argued that Medicare and Medicaid have not raised their reimbursement rates to match inflation, and say they often lose money on Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Clearly, hospitals need to receive sufficient revenue to remain in business, and having revenues that are above costs is necessary," Bai and Anderson noted. "This argument, however, cannot completely explain the wide variation in the charge-to-cost ratio … or why some hospitals are charging 10 times their own costs."

Bai says states can and should regulate what hospitals charge. Maryland sets hospital rates but is the only state that does. West Virginia regulates rates, while only California and New Jersey have state legislation that requires for-profit hospitals to offer discounts to eligible uninsured patients.

Bob wrote:ppaca reminds me theres one thing all us long-time locals need to keep in mind.

Sacred Heart Hospital used to be something run by a bunch of nuns and a religion.  And the pictures and statutes of nuns and all that are still prominently hanging in all the walkways.  Both indoors and out.  lol

But let's not kid ourselves.  This whole outfit sold out to corporatism a while back.  This is now just a cog in a mega hospital corporation.  lol

The CEO nun that used to run it also didn't demand upwards towards a million a year. It's been a while since I looked this all up but I think the top 5 or 6 people earn around $10 million a year. I can see the CEO of Ascension maybe making a million, but not the individual hospital's chief executive.

I know this isn't specifically related to this thread,  but I'm very happy to report that I just got a call from Touchstone Imaging about their cheating me out of $100 on the co-pay and then trying to gouge me for $799 more.

They called simply to tell me "we have expedited a check to you in the amount of $101.74" (the amount they overcharged me) with no mention of me any longer owing them anything.

Sometimes the little guy does win.  lol

They must have received the billing you sent them. I'm glad it worked out.

ppaca wrote:They must have received the billing you sent them.

Oh yea. She started out the conversation with "regarding your letter" or something like that. It was definitely in response to that "billing".
I'll have to give em credit, when they get a bill they pay it on time. roflmao

Did they tell you "check is in the mail"?


Hope you get it soon.

ppaca wrote:Did they tell you "check is in the mail"?  

She said "it's been expedited". Sometimes that means overnight or 2-day delivery. Dunno. lol

ppaca wrote:True the hospitals are not to blame for what our state legislature's decide or Scott, but it's pretty apparent the hospital's are trying to get it back from the insurance company's. The 28% increase they want is quite steep.

If you looked at one of Bob's attachement you will see this involves every hospital that is Ascension. This has just not happened with them in the past month I have seen several notice's on several hospital's across the state, some they settled at the last minute and one they told to bite the dust and no longer a provider.  In 20 years I have never seen so many notice's, that are private, come through about this many hospital's.

If you a fb page go to it and search for weartv and read the thread on the most expensive hospital's and all the comments.

The ONLY thing to blame is Obamacare. A boondoggle which has kept NONE of the promises used to sell it to Progressives. FAILURE!

Nope, these problems existed before obamacare.

ppaca wrote:Nope, these problems existed before obamacare.

And, as I said, Democrats and dozens of times, semi-retired President Obama PROMISED that Obamacare would solve all these problems.

Massive FAILURE

Massive FAILURE

Hardly.  The only failure to date is they
have not completed the process......Medicare for all.

Markle wrote:

ppaca wrote:Nope, these problems existed before obamacare.

And, as I said, Democrats and dozens of times, semi-retired President Obama PROMISED that Obamacare would solve all these problems.  

Massive FAILURE

I saw nossing in the bill that said health care provider's could not screw up or overbill. Must have missed that part.

ppaca wrote:

I saw nossing in the bill that said health care provider's could not screw up or overbill. Must have missed that part.

Sacred Heart is capitalism,  ppaca.  How in the world could capitalism ever do anything wrong?  You need to start getting the truth from Sean Hannity and stop listening to all that other commie news media.

I'd like to give obama a piece of my mind, ppaca. He had to have a hand in selling me that Mega policy. lol