Yes you Senator-you worthless piece of crap. You’re so proud of yourself for blocking the extension to unemployment, COBRA, flood insurance, etc. You whined about missing a ball game because you had to actually go to the Senate and do some work. Well let me tell you what you’ve done.
Thanks to you, a 21% Medicare cut goes into effect Monday. That’s not too bad, you say, those rich doctors can afford a little less income. Let’s go through some real figures here. My overhead runs about 80%. That means I only net the last 20% from Medicare. Since you are cutting Medicare by 21%, I will be in the red. Therefore, I will not be seeing Medicare patients any longer. It sucks because I was one of the few doctors seeing them in my area. I can’t operate at a loss, though. I guess we’ll just have to tell the seniors what you said when the other Senators complained about you blocking this bill-and I quote you-“Tough shit!”
Also don’t forget to tell former military people that they can’t be seen either, as Tricare compensation is tied to Medicare compensation.
As an aside, a generalized pitting for the entire Congress for just planning to stall implementation for a month anyway. We’re sick and tired of putting off these cuts over and over. Even if you stall another year, the cuts will then go up to 26%. The entire compensation formula needs to be changed.
Finally, a pitting to Medicare who in its wisdom has once again decided that the best way to deal with the above situation is to simply not pay doctors until the Congress can sort things out because if they do pass an extension, they wont have to send out corrected checks. Yes-much better to let doctors go broke than to do a little extra paperwork. Meanwhile, I’ll be digging into my retirement funds to meet payroll.
Are you certain about the Tricare/Medicare tie-in? That would affect a LOT more people than just cutting Medicare alone.
If so, I can’t say I’m surprised. Erosion of benefits in the name of squeezing another dollar out of a bloodless turnip has become par for the course. Its a shame, really. My Dad devoted 36 years of his life to government (military) service as an officer in the Army. All the vets deserve better than that. They shouldn’t have done the Tricare thing to begin with.
Tricare is military health insurance basically. If you’re military, retired military, or a dependent of a member of the military, you have Tricare as health insurance.
Medicaid rates are also tied to Medicare somehow - I’m not entirely clear but there is a link, so the poor people are shit out of luck (those that qualified for Medicaid - those that don’t and are still poor are another whole pile of stuff)
No extension to COBRA help? Lots more people without health insurance of any sort.
Without extension to unemployment… when the money runs out the ONLY aid most of those people will qualify for is SNAP a.k.a. “food stamps”. And baby, you can’t pay the mortgage/rent with food.
No further aid to small business? Great going, senator asshole - small business generates most of the new jobs in an average year. So with that you make it even harder for the unemployed who can’t pay for housing anymore and who have no medical care to try to find a job to pay for a hovel and maybe a band aid.
Fuck you, Senator Bunning. Fuck you long and hard with a dildo studded with rusty nails and broken glass. I hope you wind up homeless and sick and have to wait 12 hours in an understaffed, undersupplied ER in horrible agonizing pain before being sent back to a cardboard box over a sewer grate where you will shiver, alone and hated and without a friend in the world or a dime in your pocket. I wish on you the same fate you have prepared for so many of the citizens you supposedly work for. What a goddamned piece of shit. What do we have to do to send this worthless jackass to the back of the unemployment line?
I’m sorry. I feel the same way. The fact that you have retirement money means you are already better off than these people on medicare who can no longer get your help.
DO NO HARM should be way more important to a doctor than losing his retirement money.
ETA: What you should do in this situation is up the price for the people who can pay. Like most doctors who can actually take pro bono cases without losing money.
Except that most private insurance companies won’t let doctors do that.
Look, yes, doctors should help people - but warm fuzzy feelings don’t pay the bills. The utility companies and the bank won’t accept IOU’s and good intentions. If a doctor runs his/her practice at a loss for too long they lose everything. And then they can help no one.
Good luck with that. Insurance companies negotiate what they’ll pay each year; I’ve seen different major insurance companies refuse to cover large Chicago hospitals for a year or so due to being unable to come to an agreement about payment. If the patient has an HMO, they’re not going to pay anything on top of what the insurance company does; same with many other insurance types.
This method fucks over people who opt for things like Health Savings Accounts and the like.
Fuck Jim Bunning sideways. And fuck the clueless “leadership” in the Senate that let him get away with this bullshit. Because of one lone asshole, there are going to be millions of people put into some terrifying positions this weekend while he goes and watches basketball. There is no way to let him feel the collective pain that he’s caused with his obstructionist bullshit, but there ought to be something that can be done. Perhaps a beating with soap in socks?
So she should be expected to see patients at a loss? That’s a great way to keep the doors open.
And it’s not like she’s going to catapult them out of the hospital. In our state you have to give someone at least 30 days notice that you won’t be able to see them anymore. Yeah, it sucks, but the patients have time to make other arrangements.
To put it comically mildly, it’s more complicated than that.
Bunning is a grade-A choad. Up until 2004 the worst kept secret in KY politics was that he was batshit senile, and his re-election campaign laid it bare for everybody to see. He came up with some bullshit “emergency” that required him to fly back to Washington so he had to attend their live televised debate via satellite, where he was obviously being fed cue cards. Congress wasn’t even in session at the time.
Now that he’s not running for re-election he doesn’t have to hide his senility or his assholishness (which, in my experience, tends to be magnified with cognitive decline). He’s an embarrassment.
Bunning’s obstruction is having a huge ripple effect. According to this report, much of the federal Department of Transportation will shut down, including the immediate furlough of 4,000 federal employees.
Goddammit. This is a fucking end-around to absolve the government of its responsibility of the soon to be enormous amounts of health and mental care that our soldiers are going to return home to because of the wars.
I dunno…maybe stop waging expensive, ineffectual wars that cost a trillion dollars before cutting American’s health benefits?