heavy price: medicare overpaying for back braces

[xchrom]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MEDICARE_WASTE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-12-19-03-14-02

WASHINGTON (AP) -- You can find it on the Internet for $250 or less. But if Medicare is paying, a standard-issue brace for back patients costs more than $900.

In a report expected Wednesday, federal investigators say Medicare paid an average of $919 for back braces that cost suppliers $191 apiece, providing a window on how wasteful spending drives up health care costs.

"The program and its beneficiaries could have paid millions of dollars less if the Medicare reimbursement amount ... more closely resembled the cost to suppliers," says the report from the inspector general of the Health and Human Services Department. The Associated Press obtained a copy.

In a written response, Medicare Administrator Marilyn Tavenner said the findings provide valuable insight into the inner workings of her program. Medicare will consider including back braces in a competitive bidding plan for medical equipment, she said. The bidding experiment, expanding across the country, already has been shown to save taxpayers money.

[rurallib]

1. and who can everforget the medicare drug bill

aka the pharma golden gift?

[reformist2]

2. I wish the gov't would focus on waste in Medicare/Medicaid, and leave SS alone!

I can only wonder how much cheaper our health care bills would be if only MMS were given the power to negotiate prices.

[Revanchist]

3. According to the GAO

Medicaid fraud and waste may exceed $100 billion a year [link:http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Uncovering-Waste-Fraud-and-Abuse-in-the-Medicaid-Program-Final-3.pdf| and Eric Holder suggested that there was between $60 to $90 billion in Medicare. While some of this can be attributed to changes in reimbursements and coding errors, the majority of this is intentional fraud. We need to increase the penalties of those committing intentional fraud and prohibit those of committing fraud from ever conducting business with CMS again.

[Brickbat]

4. My dad, who is on Medicare, told me he's amazed at the phone calls he gets from companies pushing

items like back braces and other items. They call and tell him it's important to have one around, just in case, and to not worry about a thing because "it's covered." The back brace people started off by calling him and saying, "Your back brace is ready, where should we deliver it and what size would you like?" I can only imagine how many people just take this stuff because they don't know any better, and these companies make out like bandits.