(Snippets from the frontline)
Here’s the scam: Observation Status
You’re admitted to the hospital with chest pain. Tests show you did not have a heart attack, and you are discharged home. Then your bill arrives.
Even though you were tested and surrounded by doctors and nurses as you laid in a hospital bed, your status was “Observation.” You were not considered “in-patient” and the bill indicates you have to pay rates and deductibles as an “out-patient.”
Who makes money on this? Hospitals. Who loses money on this? Patients.
Tired of getting “nickel and dimed”, with some of you losing your home or going into bankruptcy while hospital collectors ravage your savings?
Historians will look back and say this was the epitome of greed.
Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D.
I remember going to the movies as a kid and adults, left and right would smoke. It was a common and normal event and there was so much resistance to end smoking in public spaces. If someone were to light up in a theater today….. the crowd woukd beat the crap out of the smoker! I remember being 3 and jumping up and down on the nack seat while my momnavigated the tight curves of west Sunset Blvd….and i remember filling the car with tons of kids to go to the drive in (with 4 in the trunk) as a teen. NO SEAT BELTS! Resistance to seat belt laws, and later motorcycle helmut laws, was HUGE! What were we thinking? If any child was seen jumping on the back seat of a car today, or a car of teens packed shoulder to shoulder like sardines were seen today, most neighboring drivers woukd call the coos. In the future, we will be looking back at this era of mobster insurance company tactics and price gouging and say “WTF were we thinking and why did our legislators allow it yo continue”? And think about this one…. Open Enrollment? Why do we act like sheep and put up with that nonsense? Its the free of markets ever! I laugh at the phrase Open Enrollment, haha. Imagine “you can only buy a car in August” or “you can only eat dinner out on Tuedays…in April” We will all be laughing at how stupid we were in the future, hopefully sooner than later. What were we thinking?
This is the biggest fraud against our patients when they are sick and vulnerable by the Medicare and private insurance companies.
If you are ill enough to be in hospital bed and taken care by hospital nurses and doctors then you are INPATIENT and not OUTPATIENT.
Try this in hotel industry and sleep in hotel bed and try telling them that you were at your home.