Health Care Thoughts: More Complexity Grumbling
by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt
Health Care Thoughts: More Complexity Grumbling
I have made the point many times that if anything stops Obamacare it will be the inability to implement an extremely complicated program. Call it “Rusty’s Theory of Complexity.”
The feds have now published (link below) the draft application for financial assistance in health care exchanges and low income plans. Oh boy.
With attachments this could easily run 30 + pages, and of course someone is going to have to process this (there will be an online version). Having helped people with paperwork for nearly 40 years I can guarantee this will be intimidating and confusing to many people.
Complication is the enemy of implementation. Count on it.
http://cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/PaperworkReductionActof1995/PRA-Listing-Items/CMS-10440.html
PS: HR Block has already positioned itself as a likely fee-for-service form fill-in service. Somebody is going to profit here.
That stuff is a mess. It is incomprehensible gobbledegook of the first water. HR Block is welcome to it. Currently, SSA answers Medicare questions and provides assistance for the public. Unless there is money in the budget for this purpose, SSA won’t be much help and people will be screwed. NancyO
More info:
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-applying-obama-plan-not-easy-183514024.html
Rusty
we could hope that Obamacare will sink of its own weight, just as the Medical-Industrial complex that it was designed to save was sinking of its own weight.
We need some version of single payer. Medicare for all might work. A kind of government contracting (like the Highway Dept, not like the Defense Dept) might work.
But the “might work” depends on the honesty of the people designing and re-designing the system.
Otherwise any system will sink of its own weight.
Rusty:
Go back and read one of your own clients healthcare policis and not the abbreviated one.
I deal with Medco which they are a joke. I recently paid them $113 for a 90 day supply of atorvastatin because my company said to use it. The same 90 day supply is available for $72 at Walgreens, $27 at the VA, and $0 (out of my pocket) at Meiers. When I asked howcum? Oh, it is because of your deductible. Nonsense, it is a pricing issue; but then, this is the private commercial industry.
Bill:
Interesting, but not really related to this post.
rusty
here is why i despair. you write a post about the complexity of Obamacare as a bad thing
bill suggests you pay attention to the complexity of the current ways insurance companies defraud their customers
and you say it has nothing to do with this post.
little boxes. little boxes. and they all live in little boxes made of ticky tacky
and they wonder why nothing gets better.
coberly
I’m not dissing Bill’s comment, it just likely belongs in another place.
I’ve thought about addressing the subject of billing complexity, inspired by the Time magazine story on hospital billing, but I can’t really address in less than 1000 words (or more) and I don’t have the time at the moment, nor is this the place.
when I get time I will do something and everyone can fire away.
PS: I have never defended the pre-obamacare status quo.
rusty
and i am not beating up on you personally.
but i have watched with dismay the amazing ability of humans to restrict their field of view to exactly what they want to see and no more.
Coberly:
Methinks there are two kinds of posts.
Broad issue posts and narrow informational and opinion posts.
I tend toward the later. Sometimes I write the former.
No offense taken, have a good weekend.