Woodrow Wilcox

The federal government and States can help to protect senior citizens from bad insurance company practices by making laws that cancel the bad practices. The time for an insurance company to investigate a person’s health history is before a policy is issued – not up to two years after the policy was issued, insurance premiums were paid, and the senior citizen is relying on the insurance policy.

Recently, Theresa Artley of Addus Health Care alerted me to the “Aid and Attention Pension Benefit for Senior Citizen Veterans.” Under this program, a firm that provides home care for senior citizens can be paid by the federal government for providing that care to a senior citizen veteran.

If a senior citizen goes into a hospital, they may want to bring their own medicine. If the hospital gives them the same medicine, the senior citizen will be charged outrageously way over the cost for the same medicine from usual sources.

Medicare goofs a lot and when it goofs, it hurts senior citizens. In some of my past articles, I have estimated that mistakes caused by federal Medicare employees and systems cost America’s senior citizens over one billion dollars per year in just Medicare Part A and Part B goofs alone.

Obama and his allies in Congress who pushed for the new health care law complained that health care was being “rationed” by insurance companies. They forgot to mention that much of the “rationing” was being caused by rules and policies of the federal health care systems that already exist.

The current Medicare system frequently fails to work for senior citizens. Very soon, everyone will be under a federal health care system like Medicare and everyone will start to experience such medical bill problems.

Sometimes insurance companies are blamed for not paying medical bills as expected. But when the client is on Medicare, and Medicare fails to handle billing properly, the insurance company can’t do what it doesn’t know about. Government systems are notoriously inefficient, and health care is no exception.

The Medicare system is complicated and inefficient. There are numerous examples of its inefficiency, costing the people it supposedly serves a great deal in wasted time and money.

It took a hospital and Medicare from March 2008 to February 2010 to process a claim–almost two years! Just think about all the medical bill problems the federal health care system will start to cause for everyone in the not too distant future!

Once again government health care costs patients time and potentially money. Medicare errors can be costly in time, trouble and money to those who depend on it, and private industry is left to correct their mistakes.

One problem that the “Obamacare” health care reform bill ignored was the problem of overcharging for medicines. That problem was not solved by Medicare Part D. Instead, the Medicare Part D law made the problem worse for senior citizens.

An open letter to Senators Lugar and DeMint from a medical bill troubleshooter on problems with Medicare Part B and D.

A man with a Medicare supplement received a bill recently received a letter telling him his claim was denied. Actually, the insurance company that handled his suppliment never received the claim from Medicare. How much cost and confusion is added to the system through mistakes like these?

Both a husband and wife who are clients of this insurance agency visited our office and each seemed so excited and upset that either of them could have had a heart attack or stroke right in our office.

The Medicare system’s failures cost time and money to the offices of medical service providers and insurance agency administrators and agents when we work to fix the messes that Medicare makes for senior citizens. And congress doesn’t seem inclined to do anything about it.

Every U.S. Senator who voted for the health care reform bill “stuck” every state in the Union with a big bill that no state needs right now during a recession and falling revenues.

A major reason for rising health care costs has been bad and stupid policies of the federal government. Now, both the House and the Senate version of the new bill for health care reform propose to create even more of these stupid problems.

The federal government’s attitude has already started to shift against senior citizens. Changing federal Medicare rules to shift the costs of self administered drugs during hospital stays off the federal government and onto senior citizens was just the start. These policy changes by the federal government predict future changes that will happen if the federal government takes over the entire health care system.

Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and their allies in Congress are “scrooges” who don’t care at all about the common people. Their lack of concern and action on the economy is destroying hope and holiday spirits. I’m saying that and I’m a Democrat and a former labor union organizer.

If you support a bill or amendment or procedure to forward a bill or amendment without reading it, studying it, and allowing the voters to review it and advise you, then you are an irresponsible legislator. And the label of “IRRESPONSIBLE” will stick on you in the next election.

President Obama has been criticizing insurance companies. He has claimed that insurance companies make huge profits on health insurance. To people who don’t know the details of the health care system, Obama’s claims may sound good. But, a closer examination of the facts will prove that Obama is wrong.

If Obama and his allies in Congress impose a national health care system that is modeled on Medicare, then everyone will start having wrongful medical bill problems. If you think that health care is expensive now, just wait until the government makes it “free.”

Medicare and its myriad of problems should demonstrate that we shouldn’t trust the federal government with health care. That system’s problems will be multiplied exponentially if congress forces a government health care system on Americans.

If Obama and his allies in Congress succeed in forcing a national health care system that is modeled on Medicare onto the entire population, then everyone can start to experience erroneous billing and other problems.

If President Obama and his allies in Congress impose a national health care system that is modeled on the Medicare system, then everyone in America will start to have the type of medical bill problems that this client experienced.