The Joys of Retirement?
I had figured that retirement would entail putting my feet up comfortably and relaxing. Little did I guess that rather I or my patient wife would be sitting at the computer or on phone for lengthy sessions straightening out the errors of our various voracious systems.
Could one guess that the Chase fraud credit card protection unit would begin to cancel legitimate charges for things like medications — and then would insist that they would never do such things. Two days later finally fixed.
Or would one assume that Medicare would take many months to operate or fail to connect the back up insurance with certainty for more than a year. Hate to report the numerous communications on that one — no wonder that American medicine costs so much. The insurance companies were worse. My wife’s battles before I retired pried loose many more thousands at first denied that were owing.
It is pretty obvious that many are terrified that they will lose their jobs and one begins to wonder if they are rewarded for cheating the customers?
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“A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope.” (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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2 users commented in " The Joys of Retirement "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback*************It is pretty obvious that many are terrified that they will lose their jobs and one begins to wonder if they are rewarded for cheating the customers.
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You discovered the secret held fast by many insurance companies in the past. Though clearly illegal, their first order of business on a claim, was TO DENY IT.
They figured 60 percent of the people wouldn’t bother fighting it…they were right. Of the remaining 40 percent, 20 percent would give up after the first try.
Twenty percent would stay dilligent, with about 12 percent actually following through long enough to make them pay. ONLY paying 12 percent of legitimate claims makes for HIGH PROFITS for paper pushing.
When profits still weren’t high enough….invent HMO’s (Health Maintenance Organizations with the untrained medical eye deciding on what is acceptable treatment per the HMO’s bottom line)… Yes you hit the nail right on the head!
Back in the 1990′s, the New England journal of Medicine actually had an article listing all the ways that clerks could figure out how not to pay the bills sent in by doctors.
Even with 1 1/2 secretaries to do the paper work, we never got paid for about 10 percent of our billings, and we were going broke. I figured that the payment to deliver every single baby paid by Medicare didn’t even cover the increase in Malpractice insurance needed to cover OB, yet the nearest OB was 30 plus miles away, and wouldn’t take Medicaid or illegal Mexican farm workers except as emergency patients (which is mandated by law).
Which is one reason I left a small town that really needed me to go to work for the feds (IHS).
It’s gotten worse since then…
I can’t wait til socialized medicine…it will pay for needed stuff, but not “non essential” surgery (like fixing knees for joggers).
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