Healthcare 65 Plus

The biggest syndicate in healthcare are the Insurance Companies. Believe it or not, they are in business for one thing only. Make money!! Sure, they pay the same things that Medicare does ( actually, they have to), but at a discount, of course.  

You see, this is the way they make money. 

They take your Medicare B premium (and only pay what Medicare does).. This is available at a discounted price they have negotiated. This discounted price may be 20% less. Who knows? Then they collect the Price from Medicare and make a profit plus your premiums. Now take that times 100 thousand patients and you have a billion dollar industry!

The insurance companies are supposed to manage your healthcare.  They do. They manage to become rich while you get sicker.  When you go into the hospital, that is ‘big Bucks”!  Tests and specialists are also. Then there are all those prescriptions. Oh My! 

We will get to pharmaceuticals in another post. Believe me when I tell you “Big Pharma” is the Mafia Don!

Insuranc companies like to send a provider to do a home visit once a year so they can say they are on top of your healthcare. That is a farce.

Diabetics must be seen by a physician, Everyone else gets a Nurse Practitioner. The physician doesn’t do anything to help the patients, they are only there to ascertain you are actually a diabetic. They make you feel like you are not really ill, and you may be scamming them. However they do take an A1C test so they know in fact if you are Diabetic, pre diabetic, or non diabetic.

Well, guess what?  You do not have to let them send a provider to check you! No, you can refuse because the information provided is insufficient. The provider doesn’t know you or your case, nor your progress or decline, and therefore cannot give an honest assessment. They can only say how you appeared the day they saw you. But, this makes them money because they are doing house calls!  Big, big money there. That is why they will pay you fifty bucks to do an in-home visit! They can’t get folks to cooperate otherwise. There is no point.

Now we come to the best part, do you know why Medicare sends you those monthly statements of what was paid on your behalf?? Well, we, the geriatric club of America, have the power to scrutinize what is paid and what is charged! Medicare gives us this power and hopes we will use it!  Yes, if we find mistakes or charges for things that never happened, we can send the DOJ to get the money back, and we get a percentage for being good citizens. Interesting, huh? Just one of the many things we can control. Except most of us don’t even know about it. 

Let me tell you, it can add up to a nice little sum so please , please scrutinize those statements from Medicare. Also learn to keep a little notebook and write down the date and time of every dr. visit, test x-ray. specialist everything! Refer to that notebook for each item on the statement. I know one man who got 17 thousand dollars for an overcharged hospital bill. That is not exactly chump change to a senior citizen living on a fixed income. Medicare wants US to have a portion of recovered money instead of cheating healthcare facilities.

I do a seminar on that specific topic and teach you step by step how to do this. Here is a hint. Most hospitals and many unscrupulous doctors pad almost every bill. I even do a seminar on keeping Insurance companies honest Yes, there is recourse for that as well. We seniors are all mostly retired and we have the time on our hands to follow these avenues of recourse. Believe me when you do they start to realize you deserve respect.

Ohhh, we have many avenues of recourse and the government supplies them for us. We just are not always aware . I am here to help the Medicare club get that awareness! Healthcare isn’t doing us any favors, so why should we do the same for them? Is it getting good and juicy yet?