Private sector better at running health care

This letter is in response to your Nov. 14 story and Nov. 26 editorial comments. As I first read your story of how Medicare wouldn't pay for a woman's skilled nursing care I stood up and took notice. You see I've been a licensed and certified broker working with Medicare since 1989 and had not encountered this before. About the time your original story ran I received a call from a client/friend with the exact same circumstances as your story reported. Then a week later I got another call from a client's son on the same issue. So I went back and reread the original story and it all came into focus.

In my 21 years experience of dealing with Medicare almost every day I can tell you that hospitals and doctors never change their billing procedures with Medicare without direction from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services, the government. Hospitals wouldn't change how they categorize inpatients on Medicare without direction from them.

When Medicare denies any services for doctors/hospitals Medigap policies are required to deny payment, leaving the patient with a huge out-of-pocket expense. This is the law governing supplement policies regulated by the federal and state government. Hospitals and providers just want to be paid and the government and insurance companies are usually easier to collect from then individuals.

What really irks me beyond elderly and disabled people being hit for huge out-of-pocket medical costs is the government running propaganda ads on TV as well as radio bragging about how Medicare is so much better now.

Ads are paid with our tax dollars while services that are critically needed by the weakest among us are denied. If any one thinks giving the federal government total control of health care for all Americans needs to read this story and stop buying the lies that any government can manage health care more efficiently then the private sector.

Terry L. Gavin

Elgin