Some politicians are calling for “MEDICARE FOR ALL”. If they knew the Medicare system as I know it, they never would suggest that.
For over 16 years, I have fought mistakes and fraud in the Medicare system to protect senior citizens from bad billing. I have saved senior citizens over two million dollars. I have written over 700 articles about problems in the Medicare system. I wrote the book SOLVING MEDICARE PROBLEM$.
Let me mention just three big problems with the Medicare system. There are many more; believe me. But, I just want to write an article here – not a book.
- The Medicare system is a bad system which makes fraud easy. The bookkeeping is really bad. The problem resolution system is lousy. I have experienced this in the course of helping senior citizens fight bad billing. On April 9, 2019, the Associated Press reported that the federal government “busted” a massive $1.2 billion Medicare scam. During the week that I wrote and rewrote this article, I reviewed a Medicare Summary Notice (claims report) with one of our clients. In that document, we discovered that Medicare reported that it had paid a hospital more than $500 over what Medicare had approved to pay the hospital on just one line item of the report. The bad systems of Medicare cost taxpayers higher taxes and senior citizens on Medicare higher premiums. The Medicare system sucks money from the public treasury and from consumers’ wallets.
- The Medicare system makes scamming seniors easy. This week I helped an Indiana client fight a wrongful bill from a hospital in Texas. This week I helped an Indiana client fight a wrongful bill from Chicago. This week I helped an Indiana client fight a wrongful bill from an insurance company in Minnesota. I helped other seniors with other problems, too. Many times, I have caught a false bill sent to our senior citizen client over 100 days after the senior’s insurance company had paid the bill. But, the medical billing firm cashed the check from the insurance company and billed the senior citizen for the same money that was already paid by the Medicare supplement insurance company. This happens often and scams unsuspecting senior citizens of millions of dollars per year.
- The Medicare communication systems fail regularly. The systems breaks down hundreds of times per day for a second or a split second. When that happens, claims and payments data is lost. Often, this results in Medicare supplement insurance companies not learning about claims and not paying the claims from ignorance. You can’t blame an insurance company for not paying a claim that it never got from Medicare. Medical firms bill seniors for the balance that the insurance companies would have paid if the Medicare system worked properly. The result is that senior citizens pay balances that they really don’t owe. In my book and in some of my articles, I gave my calculations for why I believe this one Medicare problem alone costs senior citizens OVER ONE BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR IN WRONGFUL MEDICAL BILLS.
I hope that you get the point. The Medicare system is far from perfect. So, any “Medicare for all” system will create more problems for citizens and more opportunities for fraudulently taking money from the federal government and from innocent patients.
In addition to these problems, I want you to consider this. The “Medicare for all” people really want socialized medicine with a “single payer system”. What has happened in other countries with socialized medicine? Here are two examples.
- Nazi Germany: Over six million Jews and various dissidents were murdered in concentration camps. The government decided that they did not need health care or the same level of health care as other people favored by the government. The official name of the Nazi Party was National Socialist German Workers Party. Adolph Hitler and the Nazis were socialists. That socialist government decided who would and who would not get health care.
- Syria: The Arab Socialist Ba’th Party has governed Syria for decades. Government health care is provided only if you don’t disagree with government officials. Doctors are NOT free to serve those who need medical help. Citizens who are not favored by the government must pay bribes to government officials in order to get needed health care. Doctors who give medical attention to wounded enemies of the government are routinely arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. I know this because I am a friend of many Syrians who have reported this to me.
Ronald Reagan said that a government that can give anything to you can take anything from you. Socialist countries have a history of using free or socialized health care to control and punish the citizens in order to suppress disagreement and political opposition. Is that really what you want for America? I don’t.
Personally, I would prefer a private health care system where I pay money to a doctor rather than pay a bribe to a government official. “Medicare for all” is a really bad idea.
*** Woodrow Wilcox *** is a Life and Liberty News contributor and the senior medial bill problem solver at Senior Care Insurance Services in Merrillville, Indiana (the largest senior citizen oriented insurance agency in the Midwest). He wrote the book SOLVING MEDICARE PROBLEM$ (www.SolvingMedicareProblems.com)For more health care articles by Wilcox, visit www.WoodrowWilcox.com.
