Medicare: Largest Denier Of Health Care Claims | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

Medicare: Largest Denier Of Health Care Claims

Posted October 6th, 2009 at 1:10pm in Health Care, Ongoing Priorities with 12 comments

According to AMA’s National Health Insurance Report Card, Medicare denies 6.85 percent of its claims, higher than any private insurer (Aetna was second, denying 6.80 percent of its claims), and more than double any private insurer’s average.

What’s fascinating is that The American Medical Association (AMA) has endorsed a public option, despite the fact that “some member physicians at the group’s annual meeting [in June] likened the notion to communism.”

The Obama administration repeats ad nauseum that we need a government option to “keep insurance companies honest” and to make sure they don’t deny anyone coverage. Well what does one say about the fact that Medicare denies more claims than private insurers?

President Obama has promised that if we like our health insurance we can keep it. But will those who are forced into the public option–which has been estimated to be minimum of tens of millions of currently insured Americans in addition to those “46 million” currently uninsured–be satisfied with their care given that the government program Medicare’s denial of claims outranks any private insurer’s?

AMA is effectively endorsing a public plan that is the largest denier of claims. How the public option would provide health care to patients is hard to understand.