i wanted to blog about this physician at the seminar who really pisses me off... maybe next time

The doctor and I went to a Medicare sponsored seminar this morning. We didn't exactly learn anything, but it was sorta nice being around other people as confused as we are. There were moments when the presenters, reading from the Medicare manual, said "Do this," and some physician would say, "No, that doesn't work," and then the other Medicare staff person would say, "You might want to try this..." It is trial and error.

It is incompetent. It's the government. But they ain't out to screw us. When dealing with medical claim difficulties, I might scream out "GodDamn! This SUCKS!!" And I might be dealing with Medicare or I might be dealing with some corporation. The phrase works well with both, but they are entirely different spheres of suckiness.

The main difference is that with Medicare, we know where we stand. If you dot every i and cross every t, it mostly works. It's the government, so they keep changing all the i's and t's. We submit a claim for a procedure that generates denial after denial and this time it works. We go back and see what we did differently. Sweet! Keep doing that! And it will work for a while and then start generating an entirely new denial. It's not malevolent. At least it doesn't feel that way to me.