Reply #11: Thanks for posting this....we need to have this discussion [View All]

[newtothegame]

I am a healthcare administrator in Iowa and I agree that there are currently UNBELIEVABLE headaches with the multitude of payers, from documentation requirements, to appeals, to reimubursement methods and levels. I would love to see a single-payer system that changes this. My main concern with single payer is this: currently, we lose money on every single Medicaid patient we see. And we damn near lose money on every single Medicare patient we see. By many accounts, single-payer healthcare would mean reimbursement for all patients at these levels. We simply could not operate. And there would be absolutely no capital for new innovative technologies, procedures that are less invasive, produce better outcomes, etc. While single-payer would provide us reimbursement for care that is currently provide free (we call it "charity care"), we still would never be able to sustain our business if ALL our patients were reimbursed by the government. So I'm not sure how an Obama administration could address this; I simply don't trust the government to reimburse us at sustainable levels if they can't do it with a limited Medicaid/Medicare population now.