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Mayo Clinic, one of the country's top hospitals, is in the midst of controversy after its CEO said that the elite medical facility would prioritize the care of patients with private health insurance over those with Medicare and Medicaid.
The prioritization by the Rochester, MN-headquartered medical practice was recently revealed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. And it has quickly drawn out some sharp critics—as well as sympathizers.
In a statement to the Minnesota Post Bulletin, Dr. Gerard Anderson, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management, compared the prioritization to policies seen in developing countries. "This is what happens in many low-income countries. The health system is organized to give the most affluent preference in receiving health care," he wrote.
Likewise, Minnesota Department of Human Services Commissioner Emily Piper, expressed surprise and concern by the statements of Mayo's CEO, Dr. John Noseworthy. "Fundamentally, it's our expectation at DHS that Mayo Clinic will serve our enrollees in public programs on an equal standing with any other Minnesotan that walks in their door," she said. "We have a lot of questions for Mayo Clinic about how and if and through what process this directive from Dr. Noseworthy is being implemented across their health system."
Specifically, Noseworthy said in a video to Mayo employees late last year:
We're asking... if the patient has commercial insurance, or they're Medicaid or Medicare patients and they're equal, that we prioritize the commercial insured patients enough so... we can be financially strong at the end of the year.
In statements, Mayo has confirmed Noseworthy's prioritization and added that about 50 percent of its patients are beneficiaries of government programs. "Balancing payer mix is complex and isn't unique to Mayo Clinic. It affects much of the industry, but it's often not talked about. That's why we feel it is important to talk transparently about these complex issues with our staff."
Source: Ars Technica
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:23PM (17 children)
Medical isn't a fucking Ferrari you fucking asshole. I notice that the biggest issue you have was them being honest because they might have to walk it back due to "resistance".
What the fuck is wrong with you? You think medical is at the same level of a fucking iPhone too? You fucking idiots are hilarious. First you compare it to something as cheap as an iPhone and then blame the poor for their lack of character and poor decision making processes. Now you mental giants switch gears and compare it to an expensive Ferrari and speak out your ass saying, "Well, not everyone can have the luxury items you know".
So, VLM, are you saying you have good medical? That must mean you have a couple of Ferraris in the garage huh?
The rest of the fecal effluence of your post basically restates the quote. The operative part of it being "low-income countries", which is what the United States is. We are not a 1st world super power anymore living in luxury, as that is only the Owning Class. The working class cannot afford medical, good food, or decent housing. The level of exploitation and oppression is fucking epic.
You, and others, are just too fucking sociopathic and obsessed with who deserves what, who is working (hard enough to you), to see the truth. OUR MEDICAL IS TOO FUCKING EXPENSIVE. There is way too much profit in it, other countries show us how stupid we are doing it, and we cannot get past the divisive politics keeping the 1% pushing medical AWAY FROM THE WORKING CLASS. It has been that way for 40 years or so ever since Title 19 and its bullshit. We've seen what happens when profit takes over industries, and that's the consumer and working class getting the fucking shaft.
If our medical system cannot be setup to PRIORITIZE the WORKING CLASS, then the only option is to rise up and gut the rich, letting them bleed out into the street. It has failed, abjectly and utterly. Medical is NOT something just for the rich and elite, it is NOT something just for the Owning Classes.
We are creating for ourselves a medical Armageddon whereby the working classes, that really make America Great, cannot afford the very basics of care. So, you "smart" sociopathic mother fucker, how do we construct a society based on a working class that cannot ever afford good food, basic medical, and anything resembling a future to fight for?
Intelligence, which you've been deprived of because of how lost you are in the White Nationalist bullshit, tells us what happens when we deny people the basics like this. However, that world is apparently okay for you on an ethical and moral basis. I guess you've cozied up to the Owning Class so you don't have to worry. So who's rich dick are you sucking? Otherwise your decisions ultimately affect you to.
Or haven't you seen how the working class Trump supporters are now losing and being backstabbed by Trump? ;P
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:39PM (4 children)
Got news for you sunshine:
A) They ain't doing what 99% of other Docs ain't already doing.
B) Medicine isn't the profit center you think it is. INSURANCE is.
B2) Medical reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid have been STAGNANT or DECLINING for over ten years. Yet your insurer is consistently able to rack up record profits, quarter after quarter. EVERY quarter.
So where do you think the real problem lies? Your greedy Doctor, or your greedy Insurance Company?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:18PM (1 child)
I interpreted GP as being more focused on the lack of affordable care for the working class. The fact that everybody does this in the medical "industry" (or that medicine is even an "industry") is an even larger indictment of the system.
GP can correct me if I'm interpreting wrong, but it seems that it doesn't particularly matter to GP whether it's the doctors or the insurance companies or who exactly is profiting off the exploitation of the working class.
And yeah, I've kind of been wondering when declining payments from Medi* would start making headlines as larger facilities begin to refuse to accept it. Lower priority is a step up from certain practices around here that flat out don't accept those.
Personally, I realize that doctors aren't exactly making out like bandits. However, the hospital administrators certainly are, and they're all too happy to have somebody else to point the finger at like insurance companies. Insurance companies, of course, are likewise happy to be able to point the finger at hospitals. It's just a big 1%er circle jerk, and too many people get distracted by it and miss the forest for the trees.
Oh, that's not to mention the tax write-off other 1%ers get when they "donate" to the facilities where their friends are administrators. I put donate in scare quotes because how much of a donation is it really if it's just going to be siphoned up and sent back to them by way of their shares of insurance companies? Hell of a financial acrobatic act if you ask me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:57PM
I'll take that in reverse order. First, industry. Yeah, it's a little disheartening to realize that medicine has its share of industrial complexes. But wishing that it were not true is not going to make it false. Double negative aside the insurance companies, the hospitals, and the government all conspire to make it harder for an independent, non-hospital-or-megahealthcorp affiliated practice to stay in business. Every year. So, if you don't want a healthcare industry, what have you done to help dismantle it? I work in an independent practice, that's what I do. At least until I won't be able to afford to anymore - I guarantee I could be making a lot more money elsewhere. And that, things keep up the way they are, eventually my bosses will have to sell out to stay alive as practitioners.
Physicans aren't without blame either. They drank the Kool Aid years ago of, "We'll give you more patients and more consistent reimbursement just for signing up with us!" And they don't *always* play the highest-dollar game - the sicker patient actually still wins most of the time. Whether that costs your physician or not. But two equally sick patients and one slot available for a patient visit... who do you think wins that? (If the doctor just doesn't double-book it....)
But because it doesn't matter to the GP who's screwing him/her or making the profit off of the GP, the GP will just happily point the finger of blame at whatever person shouted at him last. And my point is that maybe the GP should be looking for where to correctly put the blame by doing a little more research instead of jumping on the "Damn Greedy Doctors" train.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @01:44AM
Again the turds who support GOP policies fail basic reading. No where did anyone blame the doctors, the only thing I could find all the way up to the first post was "medical care is expensive". Yall need to go back to school.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 23 2017, @03:17AM
Chew on this, sunshine: Insurers and Healthcare providers are merging into single integrated entities. It doesn't matter which one is making the profit, it all goes to the same owners.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Justin Case on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:25PM (8 children)
If you can't make your point without screaming insults and profanity, you probably don't have one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:31PM
> If you can't make your point without screaming insults and profanity, you probably don't have one.
Shit begets shit.
Ed's just being upfront while VLM is being duplicitous.
You do prefer an honest talker, a straight shooter, don't you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:44PM (1 child)
Well, you can have a point and still scream profanities. The problem is that the profanities and anger just dilute it all and no one gives a care about what you have to say, no matter how true it is.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:46PM
The problem is that the profanities and anger just dilute it all and no one gives a care about what you have to say, no matter how true it is.
Ironically he got much factually wrong, probably because he's all worked up.
The problem with getting worked up is its bad dialectic strategy. Trump didn't get meme'd into office by the GNAA saying the n-word a million times or whatever other example you'd like. /pol/ memes did help, but GNAA chanting never accomplished anything.
I was tempted to "u mad bro?" him but if he stroked out from being worked up I'd feel bad because he's cool when he's not triggered. Also I don't know if there's a Cuban medical doctor nearby to save him LOL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:32PM
Piss off with your hurt feelings, there was plenty of "point". A lot of people are simply tired of being told we can't fix the system, or that poor people deserve their shitty situation. Here's a clue: it is a systemic problem not an individual problem.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:49PM (1 child)
Did you vote for Trump?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:24PM
How'd you guess?
(Score: 3, Informative) by art guerrilla on Wednesday March 22 2017, @12:28AM
at justin case of cods liver oil -
oh, fuck off, prissy prig of a milquetoast...
1. if you are unable or unwilling to consider the views of someone else cause they said wee wee or doo doo, then the failure is yours: you value style over substance...
2. further, that the poster lambasted the often lame-brained (but equally often informative) vlm, doesnt have anything to do with comity or civility; vlm has a passive-agressive smugness which deserves a good shellacking...
3. in short, urine idjit...
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:54AM
So you've arbitrarily decided that using insults and/or certain words that you deem bad means that someone probably doesn't have a point? I'm not sure where the logic in that is, but fine.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:54PM (1 child)
Personally I like Ferrari as a metaphor because the US govt will, can, and has bailed out the domestics. So if I made an example like "Imagine GM having to give away a truck to everyone for free, they'd go out of business" and the rebuttal is of course not, the .gov would bail them out (again). If Ferrari were forced to give a nice expensive car to everyone they would in fact go out of business.
The fundamental problem that can't be hand waved away is a nice death in America costs about as much in medical costs as a nice Ferrari. Not a cheap Ford or my new Yaris or whatever. So... you can hand wave all you want about morals and ethics but if the cost of death is getting vaguely close to lifetime income, there's going to be problems paying for that very expensive death.
You can imagine the Eqyptians pouting that everyone who dies should get to be buried in a great pyramid. Sure, our culture can't afford it but who cares they're entitled because, um... because its a human right to take someone elses money to have a really fantastic death ritual. And a bunch of us vs them class stuff about how everyone is entitled to burial in their own great pyramid regardless of social strata especially every poor person should have tax money build him a great pyramid of a death. Yeah there's some scaling issues.
You have some peculiar beliefs about what I believe in. People of a national SOCIALIST tendency tend to have a rather right wing view of how to serve the american workers, often confused by those used to "worker=left wing" commie stuff. As you'll recall a rather famous quote by the God Emperor himself on the topic of the R party now being "the party of the American worker". Personally I don't like the NatSoc moniker as that was a last century German thing and this isn't Germany in the 30s. But I like "American Nationalist" label. Some folks say 12 of one, a dozen of another, I don't think the label is as important as the belief.
A lot of american nationalists or alt right or pre-neo-con republicans or whatever you want to call them were formerly very cringe level libertarian so its sure not your fault for confusing them. Times change, and with them, beliefs.
blame the poor for their lack of character and poor decision making processes
Well, we agree on the latter two observations at least that's a start.
OUR MEDICAL IS TOO FUCKING EXPENSIVE
we seem to be arguing quite a lot over something we agree on.
the White Nationalist bullshit
You seem very confused about neocons vs alt right / american nationalist / american workers party type stuff, shouting at alt right people for having neocon beliefs and such. The neocons are the epitome of the ever so Christian values of "F you die in a ditch" wrt to poor people, sick people, pretty much everyone not living in Israel, and I more or less agree with your assessment of the neocons needing to go in an oven. Everyone to their left AND right wants them in the (metaphorical of course) oven. I don't think anyone likes the neocons very much other than the Israelis who really enjoyed their foreign policy... mistakes.
You know, when you read in a history book about the Holocaust and how could the Germans have permitted it, but then back to the 2010s, when you look at the literal millions of 3rd world deaths, and tens of thousands of american deaths, and literally trillions of dollars wasted, and what we could have done with trillions of dollars (hmmm health care maybe?) and ask yourself if the neocons were being tossed into ovens today would I risk my life or my families life to save a neocon life? Hell no, I'd probably fund raise money for the gas bill.... I remember when the neocons kicked all the normies out of the R party, and I was blue pilled normie back then not happy about it at all.
Give the God Emperor some time. Its one eternal godlike sandworm and 100 days against the entire cathedral for decades. Rome wasn't burned in a day, right?
You might find you agree with some of the folks on the far right. Your rant can also get a simple cut -n- paste job for higher education and real estate too, for a good time.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @12:12AM
How do you have the time to write all these tediously long self-justifying posts?
Anyone with so much free time to waste on validating their own inhumanity can't possibly be a productive member of society.
You've painted a picture of yourself as self-loathing NEET.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 22 2017, @01:13PM
The profit in our medical only comes when they get paid, and they only get paid by people who lack "negotiating power." People on insurance pay their insurance providers, but then 90% of the value of insurance isn't that they pay for your healthcare, it's that they negotiate the cost of your healthcare down to a sane level.
So, the insane profits come from private pay (uninsured) patients, who all too often are unable to pay, so the ones who can pay are hit with a huge bill to cover the ones who can't. Basically, if you are in the uninsured pool, you have agreed to either pay for those who don't pay, or become one of the "don't pays" yourself and lose your credit rating. It's a very broken version of self-insurance.
🌻🌻 [google.com]