Uninsured Awareness

Article by Steve Verno
Reprinted here with expressed permission by the author.


In Florida, there are 3,071,000 people who are uninsured. The place where almost all of these people go for health care is the emergency room. As a result, because they are uninsured, their medical bills go unpaid for various reasons. The average emergency room physician bill is $250.00. Multiply that by the number of uninsured and you see a minimum loss to the physician community of Florida in the amount of $767,750,000 if each person has one emergency room visit, but they don't because uninsured patients must use the emergency room for medical care.

This doesn't count the loss when one of these uninsured decides to sue for financial gain. Like any other business, losses have to be added to the cost of business. My brother is uninsured and spent a week, needlessly, in the hospital. He was medically abandoned because he was uninsured. He should have spent one day in the hospital, but because no doctor would see him, my brother rotted. He was released only after I complained to the CEO of the hospital organization. His medical bill = over $30,000. This is why this hospital chain is involved in a class action lawsuit. Can my brother pay this? No. He is unemployed. With what he was charged, my brother could have flown first class to Las Vegas, stayed in a suite at the Bellagio, and gambled $1,000 per day and it would not have come near what he was charged to stay in a semi-private room and watch TV all day, waiting for someone to see him.

His condition? A cyst on his eyebrow, which opened and he was forced to clean it with toilet paper because the nursing staff refused to come to his room when he called them, telling them that the cyst opened and was draining down his face. When they did give him 4 gauze pads, they charged him $75 for these pads which costs about $5.00 in a drug store.If we took one HMO CEOs salary and bonuses for a one year period, we could pay alot of doctor bills for the uninsured.

I am amazed at how much employers are paying insurance companies in premiums. It's almost criminal. In addition, if the employee has family members, then the employee is contributing to the cost of health care. This is why health care is unaffordable. The insurance companies are charging sky rocketing premiums and giving nothing back. Lets say you are a family of 4 and in excellent health. You pay $250 per month in premiums as your part. Your employer is probably paying $500 per month, but lets keep to the $250. In one year, you paid $3,000. Lets say you have a $1,000 deductible. In that one year timeframe, lets say little Suzy was sick and you took her to the doctor. The visit was $150.00 with a $30 co-pay. Not only have you paid out $250 per month in premiums, but you just shelled out $30 more for the visit.

The insurance company applies the bill to your deductible, so to add insult to injury, now you have to pay $130 more. So, what did paying for insurance get you? Bupkiss! You can't even take this off your income tax.Lets say you get real sick. You have $900 in medical bills. The insurance company still applies this to your deductible and you pay out of pocket for the care. Do you really feel comfortable, knowing you have medical care? So far the insurance company hasn't paid a dime. Now you get sicker. The insurance company denies your claim stating the care was not medically necessary. Who ends up paying the tab - you and your employer. Did you ever wonder where the insurance company gets the money to pay these high priced CEOs? Now you know.

I once signed up for dental care that would cost me $120 per month or $2,400 per year. I looked at what I was given for benefits. One free cleaning per year. I had a $300 deductible. At the most, the insurance company would pay 50% for certain covered services. Root canals were not covered, nor were bridges or crowns. I terminated the policy immediately and put the money in a savings account. My wife had to have a tooth removed. Cost: $190. I took the money from the savings account, asked the dentist for a 10% discount and got it and he was paid right then and there. In one year, I put $2,400 in this account, which paid cash for all of our dental care.

Maybe employers would be better, putting the premiums into a savings account and having the employees put their share in as well. Then go to all of the doctors in the area and work out a deal with them to pay 90% of the medical bill immediately in return for providing their employees with medical care. Lets say you have 10 employees and the provider puts $200 per employee per month and each employee puts in $100 per month. This is $3,000 per month in the account. In one year you will have $36,000 for medical bills. If you have a high risk employee, then work out a deal to get low cost health insurance for that employee. But if you get a few employees visiting the doctor per month, you still have the money to pay for the care and the doctor gets paid better and quicker than if they were dealing with the insurance company.

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About the Author: Steve is a Certified Master Medical Coder and Certified Master Medical Biller and Medical Coding/Billing Instructor. He also is the co-owner of Lucrum Consulting, LLC. which provides training in medical coding and billing issues, and helps physician's practices in areas such as A/R recovery, appeals, and staff training.


© 2005 Steve Verno

Make Your Career Offshore Proof

There has been a lot of talk recently about American jobs moving overseas…offshoring is the buzzword for it. During difficult economic times it is often easy to find a scapegoat to blame for a downturn in jobs. While government reports and politicians try to downplay the impact, offshoring is something to take seriously. This article will discuss the permanent effect offshoring will have on U.S. jobs and what you can do to make sure it doesn't happen to you. Economic crises of the last thirty years have tended to blames overseas competitors for America's financial woes. During the seventies it was foreign steel to blame and during the eighties it was foreign agriculture. The current trend of moving American jobs overseas, particularly to India, The Phillipines and other developing nations has been troubling to many. While some people think this is a temporary situation, shifts in the American economy and world politics indicate otherwise.

One of the effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War has been the increased globalization of trade. On this continent, economic borders have opened up due to the North America Free Trade Act (NAFTA). In Europe, the collapse of the Iron Curtain has opened the borders of the eastern countries. And the European Union has made a significant impact on the economy; standardizing currency in 13 countries in 2000 and adding 10 new member nations last month... mostly former Eastern block nations. Even China has joined the global free market, contributing $620 billion in trade to the world's markets in 2002. China has taken control of Taiwan and regained Asia's economic powerhouse - Hong Kong - after 100 years of British rule.

These global economic changes are big and they will not go away. American companies have taken advantage of the global market, establishing icons of American culture like fast food, retail stores and computer software everywhere. With all these events and situations, it only makes sense that American companies would turn to foreign labor.

Besides, the economic impact of the world's political shift, the American economy has transformed itself. The rise of the computer has shifted the United States economy from an industrial nation to a nation of information and service. This means there will be less jobs in making things and more jobs in marketing and servicing things. Unfortunately the American education system has been ill prepared for this inevitable change. In the mid to late nineties, thousands of well paying computer jobs went to foreign nationals on temporary work visas. Additionally, domestic workers on a whole will move from being permanently hired employees to contract or temporary employees. As a worker, it will be more important to market yourself, keep a good network of contacts and maintain your technical skills.

Although this news sounds grim, it's really not. Most of the jobs going overseas are in the lower salary ranges like customer service and technical support positions. Meanwhile, the new "hot jobs" pay very competitively, even for workers who lack employment experience.

If you're afraid your job may be going overseas, or you want a better paying career with more advancement opportunities, take a look at these hot jobs:
1. IT Security
2. IT Project Management
3. IT Outsource Management
4. IT Database Administrators
5. Health Care - Medical Assistant
6. Health Care - Nursing
7. Health Care - Home Health
8. Health Care - Dental Hygienists
9. Health Care - Medical Coding
10. Health Care - Medical Office Administration

Find out how you can begin the education for one of these great careers!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Author: Max Stein, Salt Lake City, UT, USA http://www.degreesource.com/articles.
Stein is a freelance writer who writes about business, education and marketing.

Contact: maxstein_9@hotmail.com

Why People are Attracted to the Medical Coding and Billing Profession

I. People are attracted to the medical coding and billing career for several reasons:

• they enjoy the healthcare field, medical terminology, and anatomy, and understand numbers and codes
• they like helping people but prefer to work independently, from their own area away from the public's eye
• they are detail oriented and meticulous when it comes to their work
• they know how principles of the computer, and how to find answers to problems
• they prefer intensive accelerated training courses and then get out and hit the workforce fast
• they enjoy learning-by-doing, and learning additional skills through workshops, and online courses
• they are serious about their career and enjoy constantly learning new things as the rules and laws constantly change
• they see the possibility to start their own business down the line
• they want to earn their money doing what they love

Indeed most distance education courses in medical coding and billing programs do not take very long to complete. Students can complete their courses in just a few weeks, or months, and get out making money using new skills fast.

However, anybody serious about their career should consider enrolling in a Medical Coding and Billing course at a vocational training institution, or college, especially if they do not have any prior training in office procedures, keyboarding, health education, biology, anatomy, business math, and simple bookkeeping.

II. A certificate program in medical coding and billing typically requires the following courses, which is followed by a clinical practicum:

1. Medical Terminology
2. Human Anatomy and Physiology
3. Pathology and Disease Processes
4. Keyboarding
5. Health Information Management
6. CPT Coding
7. ICD-9-CM Coding
8. Healthcare Laws and Ethics

Important is to realize that the medical coding and billing specialist's training and learning does not end here! Medical coders and billers always have to keep learning, because the rules and laws in health care, along with the medical coding software programs constantly change! It truly is an interesting, and challenging career.


III. The need for well trained medical coding and billing staff is so great, that students from accredited programs often have jobs before they are completely finished with school. Physicians appreciate well trained, dependable medical coding and billing staff, because not being paid for their services, or being charged large penalties due to improper coding could mean financial disaster, and cost them their livelihood.


IV. Once hired, medical coders and billers hold secure jobs, with good future outlook. Once a position is secured, their supervisors will have to spend a great deal of time training their new medical coder one-on-one, for several weeks, if not months. Once training has stopped and coder is gaining experience by doing and partaking in continuing education classes, chances are good their bosses will want keep them. A medical coder and biller that makes sure the employers are pleased can expect to be handsomely rewarded. This may also include regular pay raises, perks, and other valuable fringe benefits.



Autor: Danni R.
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