Word: medicaid
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SOLUTION: Shut it down. Medicaid patients can receive better care, and the federal contribution would be better spent, under the simplified universal plan proposed above...
...MEDICAID...
...fastest-growing spending program in the U.S., Medicaid will dispense $158 billion in federal and state funds this year to provide health care to 27.3 million Americans. Costs are careering out of control. Medicaid pays for half of all nursing-home patients -- or 250,000 Americans -- at an average annual cost of $34,000 a person. Medicaid also looks after the 158,000 severely impaired crack babies born every year ($1.8 billion a year), the 35,000 AIDS victims who have run out of money, the poor single mothers and pregnant teens, the hardest-pressed Americans...
...doesn't do a very good job because the rules governing the delivery of care are unrealistic and wasteful, often requiring hospitalization, for example, where out-patient treatment would suffice. Moreover, many doctors refuse to treat Medicaid patients because of rock-bottom reimbursement and the snarl of bureaucratic rules. The program is also a sitting duck for thieves because of poor administration. Medicaid pays billions in fraudulent insurance claims for nonexistent patients...
...date, a $1 billion rip-off carried out by thieves operating clinics on wheels. Investigators say the clinics offered patients free tests and exams, then used their insurance information to generate a huge number of fake bills. In a similar scam in New York City, a doctor billed Medicaid for $50,000 worth of lab tests for a single patient...