What is the ID number called that’s required for Medicare/Medicaid Reimbursement?

Doctors/clinics have to file for this number in order for the government to get the reimbursements — like a health insurance claim. I think it’s called CLIA, but I’m not sure.
In response to the first answer, I was told today by a doctor that ICDs were lumped into a single code now, but I’m not sure if its true because he seems like he might not completely understand the system…

I thought private health insurance was the enemy?

According to the AARP, Medicare rejects more people than anyone else. In other words, the government denies more claims than the private sector.

http://www.aarp.org/community/groups/displayTopic.bt?pageNum=1&groupId=1162&topicId=4635892

From 3/01/2007 to 3/10/2008

Insurer – # of Claims Denied – % of Claims Denied
Medicare – 475,566 – 6.85%
Aetna – 43,317 – 6.80%
Anthem – 11,546 – 4.62%
Health Net – 193 – 3.88%
CIGNA – 9,060 – 3.44%
Humana – 4,142 – 2.90%
Coventry – 590 – 2.88%
UHC – 30,177 – 2.68%

Total number of claims denied by the public (government) sector – 475,566 (6.85%)
Total number of claims denied by the private sector – 90,025 – 4.05%

So who’s the real enemy of the American people, the private sector, which denies 4.05% of claims, or the public sector, which denies 6.85% of claims.
For all those who are using the “claims not people” argument, what is the point of paying for health insurance if they are just going to deny your claims. Face it, you just can’t accept that your precious government is the problem.

@ Proud Texan: Go take a high school economics course, one of the first things they teach with the laws of supply and demand is that higher regulations and taxes INCREASE prices, NOT decrease them.

Why do libs think health care is a right? What next, car insurance? How about free food for everyone?

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of ‘Free’ Health Care
Every new ‘right’ the U.S. government has promised has turned into a massively expensive failure, yet the media continue to cheer supporters of tax-funded programs.

Americans are obsessed with rights. We always have been.

But the concept of rights our forefathers laid out in the Declaration of Independence has changed dramatically. Those rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – were acknowledged to come from the Almighty, given equally to all people. Today’s rights come from Almighty Government.

Health care is the newest “right.” From presidential candidates’ universal plans to the return of HillaryCare to Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko,” it’s all over the media.

Calling it a “right” is an emotional argument advanced by those who want others to pay for their health care. They bring out the children and ask whether anyone can deny them the “basic human right” of health care – but don’t bother with the evidence showing how health care in this country would be harmed by government control.

A look at other modern “rights” might give us a clue about how well a new system would work. These rights started out as privileges, among them education and a paid retirement.

Now education is not only considered a right, it’s a mandate. How well has it worked? American students attend school at least until their teen years, but 15-year-olds ranked 24th out of 29 countries in aptitude for “real-life math problems,” according to The Washington Post. Literacy surveys suggest one in five American adults is functionally illiterate. And taxpayers keep shelling out money to fund the system.

Americans also cherish the right to retire – but we expect to be supported in our old age. Younger workers and employers are forced to support retirees, funding another right.

And how well has that worked? The poorly designed, outdated Social Security system is disintegrating rapidly as the number of retirees balloons. But once you’ve established a right, it’s difficult to take it away. The government, which promises such rights, must go to its sugar daddy – taxpayers – to keep the rights coming.

We’re already well on our way toward the health care right/mandate. Want to be more like Canada? It’s not that far off. Cato’s Michael Cannon has pointed out that third parties in America pay 86 cents of every dollar of our health care – about the same as Canada’s socialized system.

What we – or rather, those third parties – pay for health care is already determined by the government as well. Emory University medical professor Robert Swerlick has noted that “the pricing of medical care in this country is either directly or indirectly dictated by Medicare.” This market meddling even causes doctor shortages, he says, in needed areas of specialty.

Prescription drugs are already considered a right, thanks to political moves like the Medicare drug benefit and massive media support. A Business & Media Institute study found broadcast journalists treating prescription drugs as though they grew on trees. Overall, the coverage supported the idea that medications should magically be available to everyone at far lower costs.

Of course, the magic behind new “rights” is your money.

Cannon and fellow Cato expert Michael Tanner explained problems with tax-funded care in their book “Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.” If health care is guaranteed to everyone, how much does everyone get? Who decides who receives what, and how would the care be administered? What happens if everyone wants the most expensive treatment available?

“With the wide variety of medical tests and treatments that consumers may claim as their right, someone at some point must decide where the right to health care ends, lest the nation be bankrupted,” they wrote.

We’re well on our way toward that as well. Our “rights” to Social Security and Medicare devour about 40 percent of the federal budget. State and local property tax revenue, which normally funds education, mushroomed about 35 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to the Tax Foundation. We can’t afford any more “rights” like that.

But the left says tax-funded care is right for the children. Meanwhile, what becomes of them? They’re growing up in an America where the “rights” mentality is deeply ingrained, and the media continue to feed them with it.

When the children come of age, perhaps they’ll want the right to a job. They won’t remember that France already tested that idea for us, and it led to high unemployment and rioting. Perhaps they’ll guarantee Disney vacations for all families and force childless Americans to pay for it. “The pursuit of” will conveniently fade away as they look to government to guarantee happiness.

They will know less and less of a true right – liberty – and have no idea where it comes from.

Why does Betsy McCaughey & the GOP want to eliminate Medicare for Seniors 65 till 70?

Well they may be white and old, but Seniors, the republicans are your worse enemies – and they can’t wait to get back in power & finally get to cut your Medicare! They are already getting the ‘tingle’.

They are now proposing to cut Medicare for Seniors from ages 65 thru 69. Under the guise of undermining the expansion of Health Care for all Americans, the republicans are pushing their ‘alternatives’ designed to accomplish their 50 year dream of ‘rolling back Medicare‘ and they are willing to do it ’1 bite at a time’. That’s right, death to Medicare, 1 small bite at a time.

Betsy McCaughey: Medicare Can Save Money By Cutting Americans Aged 65 To 69 From Program

This morning, during an interview with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, health care provocateur Betsy McCaughey suggested that policy makers could slow Medicare spending without cutting $500 billion from Medicare and Medicaid over 10 years and “denying care to the elderly.”

Instead, the author of the “death panels” charge, suggested that policy makers should cut Americans aged 65 to 69 from the program:

The fact is that if Medicare inched up the eligibility age one month a year, until 2043 when it reached age 70, Medicare would be solvent. And that is what the Congress should do and that is what the Congressional Budget Office has urged Congress to do every year. That would solve the problem without telling elderly people that they have to suffer with crippling arthritis rather than get a knee replacement.

Despite McCaughey’s claim, the Congressional Budget Office does not “urge” Congress to raise Medicare’s eligibility age “every year.” The CBO merely includes the policy as one of “115 options for reducing (or, in some cases, increasing) federal spending on health care, altering federal health care programs, and making substantive changes to the nation’s health insurance system.”

To put the debate in terms McCaughey can understand, page 51 (37 in print version) of “CBO’s Budget Options Volume 1” says that death paneling Americans 65 to 69 years old from the Medicare system would have little effect on the trajectory of Medicare’s long-term spending. First, the option would require Medicare to “inch up” the eligibility age by two month every year, not one. And, since “younger beneficiaries are healthier and thus less costly than the program’s average beneficiary,” “outlays for Medicare would [still] rise to 7.7 percent of GDP by 2050.”

What’s more, “increasing the age of eligibility for Medicare would shift costs that are now paid by that program to individuals and to employers that offered health insurance to their retirees. Those higher costs might lead more employers to reduce or eliminate such coverage.” Uninsured 65 to 69 year olds would enter the Medicare program in worse health, only increasing Medicare’s costs.

Need supporting documentation? Just goggle ‘Betsy McCaughey: Medicare ‘ and find any number of sources.

These snakes ‘just say no’, unless it means screwing the public for their special interest corporate masters. This past administration was able to get into your home/home equity & your 401k thru 40 years of bit by bit deregulation. Now you only have 2 pots of money left and the republicans are coming after it for their corporate masters; Medicare & Social Security. And they are coming after it everday – bit by bit

Why do the greedy insurance companies deny peoples claims?

Even though the insurance companies deny claims. Out of all health care providers the GOVERNMENT denys the most.

See for yourself.
From the AMA’s (American Medical Association) website. Scroll down to denied claims. MEDICARE is number 1.

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/368/reportcard.pdf

With this track record why do people want the government to deny even more claims? Once we are stuck with it, it will be hard to get rid of….