Medicare Don't Care about Poor Folk

Medicare won't pay for hospital mistakes

WASHINGTON - Medicare will stop paying the costs of treating infections, falls, objects left in surgical patients and other things that happen in hospitals that could have been prevented.

The rule change announced this month is among several initiatives that the administration says are intended to improve the accuracy of Medicare's payment for hospital patients who receive acute care and to encourage hospitals to improve the quality of their services.

"Medicare payments for inpatient services will be more accurate and better reflect the severity of the patient's condition," Herb Kuhn, the acting deputy commissioner of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a statement.

The rule identifies eight conditions — including three serious types of preventable incidents sometimes called "never events" — that Medicare no longer will pay for.
Those conditions are: objects left in a patient during surgery; blood incompatibility; air embolism; falls; mediastinitis, which is an infection after heart surgery; urinary tract infections from using catheters; pressure ulcers, or bed sores; and vascular infections from using catheters.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it also would work to add three more conditions to the list next year.

"Our efforts in this arena and in other payment rules are to ensure that CMS is an active puchaser, not passive payer, of health care," Jeff Nelligan, a spokesman for the agency, said Saturday. He said the rule "underscores our drive toward quality, efficiency and integrity in the hospital setting."

Hospitals in the future will be expected to pick up the cost of additional treatment required by a preventable condition acquired in the hospital.

"The hospital cannot bill the beneficiary for any charges associated with the hospital-acquired complication," the final rules say.

Congress in 2006 gave the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services the power to prevent Medicare from giving hospitals higher payment for the extra costs of treating a patient when infections and other preventable conditions occur during a hospital stay.
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.....And the poor people will continue to suffer.

Basically if your poor at a crappy hospital, with crappy doctors, hope the hospital will pay for the damage they've cause you or that you can afford a lawyer to sue.