I was told by Davita that when my COBRA coverage ran out, that they would obtain secondary coverage for me. Well, well, at the very last minute, they said that the American Kidney Fund would not pay the premiums, if they were over $500 per month. The premium was $525.00/month for Liberty National. I called the American Kidney Fund to complain. I failed to see why I could not pay $25.00 per month, how stupid, I thought. I talked to the American Kidney Fund and the head of the division said that they would pay the insurance premiums for me. In other words, DaVita told a big fat lie. Davita complains about insurance companies, 24/7, they need to look in the mirror. I talked to the Chief Social Worker for Davita in this area. Basically, she explained to me that the shareholders were more important than the patients. Fine, if you want to have that attitude, that is great, because I will take my business somewhere. I paid those individuals 30 months of private insurance coverage. Now, they want to throw me to the wolves. I called DCI, which is the 3rd largest provider in the United States. DaVita is a company that only cares about their own pocketbook, they could care less about yours. If you would read their financial statements in the Wall Street Journal, you would realize what I mean. If you do not have a subscription, I will provide it for you, if you are interested. Ken “Mr. Multi-Millions in Bonuses” Thiry does not care about the patients or dialysis consumers, he cares about his millions. I hope he needs dialysis someday, oh, that is right, he will not be in the same position as his patients. “As you do to the least of my brothers, you have done unto me.” Jesus Christ. I wonder what Jesus will say to him when he passes away, hmmmm, it is like the rich man and the poor man. The rich man stuffed his face with food and the poor man was begging for something to eat. The rich man ignored the poor man, and when the poor man died, he went to heaven and the rich man went to Hell. I am a capitalist, however, I am not heartless like Kent “Millions” Thiry. He and his company better be worried about their souls in the afterlife.
DaVita explicitly states that the $500 a month policy for secondary Medigap insurance premiums is not AKF’s, it is purely Davita’s.The AKF pool is not unlimited and Davita is a major financial supporter of the AKF program. This change in policy helps AKF assistance reach the largest number of people with the lowest financial impact at a patient level.
Wrong, that is not what I was told by Davita. It would be nice if we would relay necessary information before the very last minute. I was told by DaVita that it was an AFK policy, which is clearly in the wrong. I think it just helps DaVita’s pocketbook, just ask Mr. $$$$$$. I wonder if Millions would appreciate this policy if he was on the other end of the stick? I am sure Millions appreciated the many years of private insurance money that I paid him to fund his measly compensation package.
The AKF program was set up to help pay for patients’ Medicare and Medigap premiums. COBRA premiums were not in the original concept for the program. Dialysis corporations figured out that donating to AKf to help pay those premiums resulted in even more reimbursement than they contributed in donations. Perhaps companies have figured out that paying more than $500 doesn’t yield much extra payback so that’s why the limit was set. It may not be the way that I’d do business, but it appears to be the way that unregulated capitalism works.
Dialysis clinics have hundreds of policies and procedures. It wouldn’t surprise me at all, NDXUFan12, if the person who misinformed you sincerely believed what s/he told you, but had the facts a bit mixed up. It does seem as if the premium limit is DaVita’s and not the AKF’s. But that doesn’t mean that anyone set out to purposely deceive you.
I do not believe that the social worker set out to mislead. It is a far leap from reality to believe that a premium for a dialysis patient would be less than $500. Unregulated capitalism??? It is the 2,000 mandates that have raised insurance premiums to these outrageous levels. Yes, the premium limit is Davita’s, not AKF’s.
I suspect that simple greed on the part of insurance companies that want to invest our premiums while paying as little as possible for actual health care are equally–if not more–likely as a cause of rising premiums. Regulations protect consumers from big business. Without it, finding out that company A has a dangerous product that kills people might help the next guy–but doesn’t do a thing for those who were already harmed. And, with tort reform, those who were harmed can’t recover damages, which leaves these companies free to continue their harmful practices. We tend to have short memories about company harms, too. The companies just rebrand themselves, change their names, and a “ValuJet” turns into “AirTran”.
Regulation is the solution for consumers, not the problem. It’s big business that doesn’t like regulation.
Stanford Economist Thomas Sowell:
MAY 13, 2009 12:00 A.M.
Blame Game
Politicians learn how easy it is to get credit and escape blame.
After virtually every disaster created by Beltway politicians, you can hear the sound of feet scurrying for cover in Washington, see fingers pointing in every direction away from Washington, and watch all sorts of scapegoats hauled up before congressional committees to be denounced on television for the disasters created by members of the committee who are lecturing them.
The word repeated endlessly in these political charades is “deregulation.” The idea is that it was a lack of government supervision which allowed “greed” in the private sector to lead the nation into crises that only our Beltway saviors can solve.
What utter rubbish this all is can be found by checking the record of how government regulators were precisely the ones who imposed lower mortgage lending standards — and it was members of Congress (of both parties) who pushed the regulators, the banks, and the mortgage-buying giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into accepting risky mortgages, in the name of “affordable housing” and more homeownership. Presidents of both parties also jumped on the bandwagon.
Most people don’t have time to spend digging into the Congressional Record and other sources to find out the ugly truth being covered up by the blizzard of lies coming out of Washington and echoed in much of the media. But my research assistants do that for a living, and it is all presented in a book of mine titled The Housing Boom and Bust that has just been published.
When the housing boom was going along merrily, Rep. Barney Frank was proud to be one of those who were pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into more adventurous financial practices, in the name of “affordable housing.”
In 2003 he said: “I believe that we, as the Federal Government, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing and to set reasonable goals.” He added: “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.”
In other words, when things were looking good, he was happy to acknowledge the role of the federal government in pushing the housing market in a direction it would not have taken on its own. But, after the risky mortgage-lending practices fostered by government intervention led to massive defaults and foreclosures that caused financial institutions to collapse or be bailed out, Representative Frank changed his tune completely.
By 2007, his line was now that “the subprime crisis demonstrates the serious negative economic and social consequences that result from too little regulation.” By 2008, his line was that the financial crisis was caused by “bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector.”
When television financial reporter Maria Bartiromo reminded Representative Frank of his statements in earlier years, he simply denied making the statements she quoted and blamed “right-wing Republicans who took the position that regulation was always bad.”
Regulation is of course not always bad, and it would be hard to find anyone of either party who says that it is. Moreover, Representative Frank had some Republican collaborators in pushing regulators to push banks into risky mortgage lending.
As for the market, financial market specialist Mark Zandi put it very plainly: “Lending money to American homebuyers had been one of the least risky and most profitable businesses a bank could engage in for nearly a century.”
What changed that was not the market but politicians like Barney Frank and his Senate counterpart Christopher Dodd, pushing the “affordable housing” crusade through government intervention, in disregard of the risks that they were repeatedly warned about by people inside and outside of government.
Although this is the biggest housing disaster the government has ever produced, it is by no means the first. Republicans intervened in the housing markets to promote more home ownership in the 1920s, Democrats in the 1930s, and both parties after World War II. All of these interventions led to massive foreclosures.
Don’t politicians ever learn? Why should they? What they have learned all too well is how easy it is to get credit for promoting homeownership and how easy it is to escape blame for the later foreclosures and other economic disasters that follow.
So much for that great regulation.
What utter rubbish this all is can be found by checking the record of how government regulators were precisely the ones who imposed lower mortgage lending standards — and it was members of Congress (of both parties) who pushed the regulators, the banks, and the mortgage-buying giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into accepting risky mortgages, in the name of “affordable housing” and more homeownership. Presidents of both parties also jumped on the bandwagon.
Invoking an example of deregulation as bad to support deregulation makes no sense. It’s classic doublespeak. Think about it. This PROVES that it’s a bad idea to take away regulation! The entire US economy just about collapsed from it. The key here is to think about the principle–regulation vs. deregulation–not WHO did it for what reason.
Ok, what does Obama, Reid, or Pelosi know about health care, what experience do they bring to the table that qualifies them to run health care??? Did they ever work in health care??? What qualifies these people to run anything??? It is sheer folly to think or assert that three people have more knowledge to run the U.S. economy with its trillions of decisions each and every day than 300 million consumers. What do these people know about dialysis, EPO, or Home Dialysis??? What price do they pay if they are wrong???
None of them works alone, NDXUFan12. Just as in any large corporation, there are divisions of Federal government where the folks who work there are experts in their field and they brief the White House. No-one on earth can be an expert in everything–not even the President of the United States. So, the better questions to ask might be: 1) How good are your experts, and 2) If they are good, are you really listening to them–or are other, political, factors more important.
Thanks for the info. Big greed companies taking advantage of patients as always.
So, what is “Greed?”