Clinic in New York Telling Seniors They Will No Longer Be Able to Get Their Chemotherapy There-More Expensive Visits Now For All at a Hospital–Medicare Can’t Do Math, Costs Everyone More

Here’s yet another clinic that had to decide with the 2% pay cuts from Medicare to either cut the patients or only have 2-6 months left to stay in business.  2% doesn’t sound like a lot but when an oncology office is ordering and stocking (and paying up front for expensive cancer drugs) it add up quickly.  One patient’s cost may be $10,000 a month as shown in the video so add on 5,000 patients which is the number that will now be turned away in order to survive and that’s a lot of money.  Payment on the drugs can be slow too and then sometimes not only with Medicare but commercial insurers as well there are problems getting reimbursed.  One more thing not as nice about going to a hospital is the exposure to hospital acquired diseases as well…wait a minute doesn’t Medicare want to bring those numbers down?  Where’ their common sense here or did they go off the algorithm cliff like so many? 

The patient in the video says Washington should all be fired for this and almost cries.  It is ridiculous too that Medicare can’t negotiate it’s own drug cost and that has been a bone of contention for years.  Again just like on Wall Street we have this selfish greed attitude and folks don’t realize the impact of their decisions or in this case non decisions impact people.  It’s not like it used to be with taking time to roll down as data is connected and these impact happen in real time too.  Here's he story of a couple more clinics from a few days ago. 

Cancer Clinics Turning Away Medicare Patients Due to Reimbursement Cuts-While Banks and Corporations Make Billions in Profits Selling Their Data

The government is totally duped by the insurers on much of what goes on and a big award this week was given to the insurers for private Medicare plans.  Again we don’t have anyone at the top of the helm running HHS and giving sufficient direction and you can see the result with an executive who can’t think the way a tech person would or a combination tech person, so this is what we get.  So far I have noticed two of the big cabinet members not taking a pay cut are HHS and DOJ, the two that I say are the most digitally challenged in the cabinet, based on what they put in the news half the time.  Medicare is also stuck on some lab test policies so those are stacking up not paid as well and I would bet we have some oncology tests in there as well that are not getting paid. 

HHS Dumps 2.2% Cuts to Private Medicare Advantage Plans; However Due to Sequester Doctor Compensation from Medicare Drops 2% Today-DC Just Can’t Do Math/Models and Gets Sucked In Looking for The “Algorithm Fairies”

Digital illiteracy and the understanding of how IT Infrastructure is killing the public a little at a time and gee I have not found any Congressional leader yet that talks about wanting to learn new tricks either.  Watch those videos in the footer of this blog for a start, good for anyone to see.  More video from Fox News on the situation…BD

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57578288/sequester-cuts-hit-elderly-cancer-patients/