Reading this made me laugh, its beyond pathetic and into loony tunes land. An O2 concentrator? Over 7K For 3 years for a device that costs $600.00 and over 5K of that picked up by the gov. Man oh man......"more government mom, please". This is criminal.


Will Congress Continue a Medicare Scam?
By MICHAEL O. LEAVITT
July 9, 2008; Page A13

This week Congress will demonstrate if it is serious or not about reining in entitlement spending. Right now the government is paying insane rental prices for medical equipment – prices far higher than it would cost to purchase the equipment outright.

For years, the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Health and Human Services's inspector general have been saying Medicare is paying too much for Durable Medical Equipment (DME). Just compare what Medicare pays to the prices of equipment for sale on the Internet.

DME prices are based on a fee-schedule established by law in the 1980s and subsequently updated for inflation. But the fee-schedules weren't based on competitively determined market prices. It is a price-fixing program, and the equipment suppliers like it because they get overpaid and don't have to compete.

An oxygen concentrator, for example, is a device that delivers oxygen through a tube to patients, and it costs about $600 on the open market. Medicare beneficiaries typically rent the machines. The rental period, set by statute, is up to 36 months. The monthly rental payment, also set by statute, is $198.40. So renting an oxygen concentrator for 36 months costs $7,142.

As with most items and services in Medicare Part B, beneficiaries pay 20% of the costs, and Medicare pays the remaining 80%. The government, therefore, pays $5,714 – almost 10 times the free-market price of purchasing a concentrator outright. The patient pays $1,428 – more than twice the free-market price of purchase. Even allowing for the costs of setting up equipment, training and fitting the beneficiary, and other things, the rental fee is way out of line.

In light of this, when Congress passed the Medicare Modernization Act in 2003, it included a section instituting competitive bidding for DME, starting in selected communities. We've now conducted the bidding in 10 locales.

Unsurprisingly, the bids came in substantially below what Medicare pays – on average 26% below. These new prices took effect on July 1, benefiting taxpayers and patients.

But those who benefit from excessive fees in the current system are now in lobbying overdrive, as they stand to lose substantial business. In the 10 communities where competitive bidding has been conducted, there are a number of DME providers who either chose not to participate or weren't successful. They and others are putting significant pressure on Congress to delay the competitive-bidding program.

In late June, House Democrats and many Republicans sought to do just that, voting to delay the bidding program by a year and a half. The bill narrowly missed clearing the Senate prior to the July 4 recess. But now that Congress is back in session, lobbyists will continue their efforts to delay the program.

Make no mistake: "Delay" means "kill." Killing this competitive-bidding program would cost taxpayers about $1 billion annually, while unjustly overcharging senior citizens.

If Congress fails to uphold even this modest effort at entitlement reform, there is little reason to believe its members will muster the political courage for the unspeakably harder choices that await them.

Will Congress Continue a Medicare Scam? - WSJ.com

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No individual can plan his own existence in their view.

So the state planners must arrogate to themselves the right to manipulate any sector of the economic system if the good of “society” or the “general welfare” is paramount.

Ipso- if the rights of the individual get in the way, the rights of the individual must be sublimated.

The Road to Serfdom
FA Hayek (interpretation)


Mortgage Backed Security survivor

If you're going to put govt bureaucrats in charge you had better expect private sector to figure out a way to exploit it at times obscenely.

Do you honestly think that govt can run healthcare for everyone without paying far too much ?

The best thing is for govt to not walk but run away from any being in the healthcare business in any way. If you look, you'll find that healthcare became expensive only after Uncle Sam got involved.