Re: SEIZURES -Reply -Reply

[Guest guest]

Hey Jim

Not true, not fair! This agency may have big problems but timely payment is not

one. Congress made certain that would be the case several years ago when it

passed a law that required payment to physicians, hospitals and other providers

within 30 days of receipt of a properly documented and submitted claim. Not

only does the agency get holy #### if it does not pay timely, but the law

requires that late payment interest be included in the reimbursement. If your

doctors are telling you they are not being paid timely they are either lying or

are not submitting proper bills. The Wall Street Journal published an article

last year where they found that of all third party reimbursers Medicare was the

most timely with the least amount of paperwork. Some private insurance

companies were delaying payments more than a year! The average Medicare payment

last year was 17 days. It will now be around 25 days since Congress criticized

HCFA for paying too fast and not taking advantage of the " float " to save money

in the budget. Yes, you can do too good a job!

If you are in a Medicare Managed Care Plan, the payment for your services is

made a month PRIOR to the covered month, so if a physician is not being paid, it

is not Medicare that is the problem, but the Managed Care Plan itself.

I hope I don't sound too defensive, but I wanted to maintain your credibility by

giving you the true picture.

Physicians generally do not have a legitimate complaint about prompt payment

from Medicare. Another issue entirely, is whether the payment amounts are

appropriate and/or adequate and with that issue there is some legitimate

disputes.

End of diatribe . . .

Take care and God bless,

M

pmendelsohn2@...

>>> " Bless " 01/04/00 10:26pm >>>

Subject: RE: [> Hello Crew and a Happy New Millennium to you all!

>

> Well came back to my office this morning and the lights were on and my PC

is

> working. The next Y2K test is whether the Medicare payment computer

system

> works, and that won't be clear until the end of the month, but

expectations

> around here are high.

heck, still takes medicare up to six months to pay the docs- speedy

------------------------------------------------------------------------

See what's happening for NF2Con 2000!

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~earldillon/nf2convegas2000.html

[Guest guest]

This is about the Medicare payments...i'd just like to say that I've noticed

that there is sometimes a problem when you also have another insurance.

For example, I have both Medicare and Blue Cross. I've noticed that, even

though I tell the doctor's office which is primary, they still file the other

first and this is what stalls the payments. Sometimes they don't get paid

for a year. And this has happened several times with the same doctor's

office. You think they'd learn!

Sometimes, the doctor's office doesn't get paid at all and they bill me for

the whole thing. Then I have to go through all the phone calls to different

places (via TTY or Relay) to get them paid. It's a pain in the neck.

But it's not the fault of Medicare. It's the lack of education of the

medical community! Medicare has been very good to me!

My 2 Cents!!

June