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Posted by Rod Speed on January 30, 2010, 12:48 pm
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Ablang wrote:
> Study: Co-pay hike ups hospital stays
> Higher out-of-pocket leads many to defer care
> Alicia Chang / Associated Press
> Los Angeles -- Higher Medicare co- pays, sometimes
> just a few dollars more, led to fewer doctors visits and to
> more and longer hospital stays, a large new study reveals.
> With health care costs skyrocketing,
Usual mindless hysterical language.
> many public and private insurers have required patients to pay more
> out-of-pocket when they seek care. The new study confirms what
> many policymakers had feared: cost-shifting moves can backfire.
Hardly ever in the real world.
> "Patients may defer needed care and may wind up with
> a serious health event that might put them in the hospital.
Yes, that can certainly happen, but MUCH more often what actually
happens is that patients dont bother with a doctor for stuff like the
common cold which no doctor can do a damned thing about and
is usually stupid enough to proscribe an antibiotic for when they
know damned well that that is completely useless for a common
cold and that just ensures that we dont have viable antibiotics
when we need them for infections that they are effective for.
> That's not good for the patients, not good for society, not good for anybody,"
That is a bare faced lie.
> said Dr. Tim Carey, who heads the University of North
> Carolina's Sheps Center for Health Services Research.
> Carey had no role in the research, published in today's New England
> Journal of Medicine.
> The study included nearly 900,000 seniors in 36 Medicare managed-care
> plans from 2001 to 2006. During that period, half of the plans raised
> co-pays for visits to doctors and specialists. Researchers compared
> medical use patterns in those plans with use in similar Medicare
> managed-care plans that kept co-pays the same. Co-pays for
> prescription drugs remained unchanged in all plans.
> Among plans that increased patient cost-sharing, the average
> co-pay for a doctor visit roughly doubled, from $7.38 to $14.38.
Not even the cost of a decent meal, fuckwit.
> The co-pay to see a specialist jumped from $12.66 to $22.05.
Ditto.
> By contrast, the average co-pay for unchanged plans was
> $8.33 to see a doctor and $11.38 to see a specialist.
> For every 100 people enrolled in plans that raised co-pays, there were
> 20 fewer doctor visits, two additional hospital admissions and 13 more
> days spent in the hospital in the year after the increase compared to
> those in plans whose co-pays did not change, researchers found.
> The study was funded by grants from Pfizer Inc. and the federal government.
>
http://detnews.com/article/20100128/LIFESTYLE03/1280409/Study--Co-pay-hike-ups-hospital-stays
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