Posted on 04/09/2014 8:30:06 AM PDT by Rusty0604
The top 1% of 825,000 individual medical providers accounted for 14% of the $77 billion in medicare billing in 2012, according to new federal data reported by the WSJ. The data shows a very small number of doctors and medical providers account for a huge amount of the costs for treating the elderly... One researcher summed it up, "There's all sorts of services that are low-value for patients, high-revenue to providers," and leaves us wondering, once again, how the government will manage as Obamacare's "success" washes ashore.
A doctor who treats a degenerative eye disease in seniors was paid $21 million by Medicare in 2012, twice the amount received by the next ophthalmologist on a list of 880,000 medical providers released by the government.
Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist who specializes in injections for age-related macular degeneration, was paid $20,827,341 in 2012, or 64 times the average in his field, the data show. His appeal of a 2009 ruling that found he overbilled Medicare by $8.9 million was rejected last year. Farid Fata, a Michigan oncologist paid $10,063,281 in 2012, was charged with Medicare fraud in August, according to court records.
Other doctors that were highest paid included Asad Qamar, a cardiologist based in Ocala, Florida, who was paid $18,154,816 by Medicare in 2012. The next highest cardiologist was paid $4,499,469.
The third and fourth-highest paid doctors, Michael McGinnis and Franklin Cockerill, both pathologists, were paid $12,577,017 and $11,068,463 respectively in 2012.
Cockerill, who is based in Rochester, Minnesota, billed for 56,628 unique patients in the year, providing over a million services. McGinnis, based in Wrightstown, New Jersey, saw 33,154 patients. The two doctors are received more than twice the amount of the third highest paid pathologist, who received about $5 million in 2012 for 8,976 patients.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
That story was in the NYT?
I’m shocked to be honest.
The engineer...
I take it that you’re not familiar with the engineers who oversaw the work on the Oakland Bay Bridge or the one up north in MI or WI that collapsed.
I detest union rats. I don’t detest all union workers...there are a lot of people who have to belong to one in order to work.
I despise the ideological union rats.
Bingo
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