[scholar]

Your doc may or may not be aware, but this will get him into very hot water...

How so? I know that a doc accepting assignment from Medicare has to be very careful about fee schedules to recipients. However, I am not aware that there is anything that prohibits a doctor from negotiating a fee with a self-insured patient--just the same as he negotiates with the various insurance plans with which he participates.

[Mamzelle]

(further discussion, likely more than you want to know) Interestingly enough, these regulations became quite difficult for the honest to navigate not due to Clinton, but to a Republican Congress under Gingrich who desired to get tough with "cheating" doctors who overbill...came about in the later nineties...Remember that big medical group...(the name escapes me but does it sound like "Columbia"?) that got hit bigtime, to the greater glory of the investigating feds?

Having one patient billed one way, and another patient billed another way is an invitation for some regulator to assume that some cheatin' is going on. Local prosecutors can earn themselves a nice political boost by bashing up a local doctor who finds himself accused of overbilling patients. That the doc only ends up ruined, not in jail, is not much comfort...although it is theoretically possible that he can end up in jail, too.

Even well-intentioned physicians can find themselves visited by the feds and the HCFA dudes, ready to carry out your files in cardboard boxes...An entire "compliance" industry of lawyering has sprung up to try to help docs figure out how to obey laws that don't make much sense to anyone, especially not the lawyers themselves, who aren't nearly as intelligent as we give them credit for.... Hiring these compliance firms is a useful demonstration of "good faith" when the feds descend upon your practice, even if their advice isn't worth what you're paying for.

Keep in mind, that these compliance firms fees are part of the expenses that get passed on to the patients. Ain't lawyering grand?

BTW, the lawyers can discount their fees any way they please. :' )

No businessman should assume that the law has any common sense.

[Landru]

"However, I am not aware that there is anything that prohibits a doctor from negotiating a fee with a self-insured patient..."

~Yet.

"...just the same as he negotiates with the various insurance plans with which he participates."

Remember what we spoke of in a prior discussion concerning the American Leftist-Socialist's attempt(s) to *break* our system?

Well?

Phase One: Remove free market rules governing the Healthcare Industry.
Phase Two: MAKE healthcare a, "right."
(1 & 2 totally interchangeable...)

That'll give us Socialized Medicine if they pull this off -- no matter WHAT they wind-up calling it or WHO we're told they're "trying to reach" -- which'll be *precisley* how this thing shall be marketed to the American masses.
~Just watch & see.

This attempt is, IMO, but-one of the Liberal-Socialist's multi-pronged attacks upon Capitalism; targeted at a specific industry but, designed to capture the whole magilla in the end.

Hillary-Care is alive & well.
(& now a *Big* thank you to the citizens of New York is in order too for allowing that monster-bitch to run amok.)

This happens here?
The Canadians can finally stay home for own healthcare, eh?

...& just think of the gas savings. {g}