On September 2, 2009 CNN.com reported that Medicare paid suppliers $1,200 for a non-motorized wheelchair while the same chair, purchased direct by a private citizen, cost $349. Medicare paid $4,018 to lease a motorized chair that the suppliers paid $1,048 to buy. And the expensive chairs used for rehabilitation cost the taxpayers $11,507 while the suppliers paid $5,800.(http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/09/02/medicare.wheelchairs/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn)
I experienced this phenomenon. My father-in-law was recuperating in a nursing home and decided he would prefer to have a hospital bed in his apartment when he returned. I got a quote from the local medical supply house for $975 to purchase, or $200 per month to rent. He decided he would prefer to buy it. At the same time, we learned that Medicare would pay for the cost of the bed if a doctor wrote a script for it. His doctor did and the same medical supply company delivered the same bed that we would have purchased. The cost to the taxpayers will be $200 per month for two years, or $4,800. At the end of the lease my father-in-law will own the bed. Not the taxpayers.
An inspector general’s report that was released on 9/2 stated, "Medicare and beneficiary payments under the Competitive Bidding Acquisition Program would have decreased by an average of 26 percent across all included categories of [durable medical equipment], saving up to an estimated $1 billion annually. However, Congress delayed the program and exempted complex rehabilitation power wheelchairs from future competitive bidding."
Despite what the increasingly mindless public dialog appears to be arguing, there is no single answer to solving the problem of high health care costs and the large number of uninsured. It is a multivariate problem with an incredibly large amount of actions required. We can start with using common sense to purchase materials. A billion here, a billion there, and you start talking real money.
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