Medicare is an insurance program for people over 65 and younger disabled people and dialysis patients. Medicaid is an assistance program for low-income patients’ medical expenses.
If we move to a Universal Insurer, we would just have one. As a universal insurer I would definitely be setting up various classes and divisions as a means to analyze needs and results, however there is no reason for this to be confusing or complicated for the end user. The end user being the patient and the payee.
I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, her mother is in assisted living. Medicare doesn’t cover any podiatry. So, they’re putting people in wheelchairs instead. She doesn’t need to be in a wheelchair, she needs a podiatrist. This doesn’t make any sense.
When I worked for a non-profit, I had to develop a system to comply with ridiculous and burdensome federal regulations AND be compatible with our payroll system. It was so complex on the back-end that the software developer had to customize the core program for our agency. I was determined to make it easy for the end-user to use, because time is money…and I accomplished that. The back-end looked like a bowl of spaghetti, but it worked effortlessly for everybody. It was a major project, costly, and in my opinion a complete waste of time that helped nobody. But, it was a requirement of the federal government so we had no choice. I had many work days that ended at 2 or 3 am because of these tedious regulations.
I can only imagine the administrative costs we are paying in relation to healthcare, just for pointless busy-work like this.
Healthcare needs to be available to everybody, and our government needs to get efficient because whether we like it or not, the government in our healthcare is here to stay.
#healthcarereform #medicaid #medicare #voiceofthevoiceless #patientisthedriver #lisalindell #108days