now we find out that blue cross was going to limit the amount of time you could be under anesthesia. they backed down after the Anesthesiologists association exposed this and UHC ceo was executed
you know the interesting part about that is... that supposed policy was based on a FU to the federal government as i understand it. and then of course twisted into a media narrative that we hear.
the story i heard claimed that Medicare/Medicaid - aka our whitless government bureaucrats - told the hospitals/care providers they would only pay for so much time under Anesthesia . lets say for the pure sake of this discussion that number was 75% of the procedure since i dont recall the exact amount. it was never that people would be denied more if the procedure called for it, but that's all that would be *paid* by Medicare/Medicaid. and since its medicare/medicaid - they would essentially be required to adsorb that cost
so typical providers - they started charging more to private insured patients for that full anesthesia time to offset what the government refused to pay for. pretty standard anytime the govt limits payouts on either meds or whatever by govt fiat (read institutes price control).
so as a clapback, daddy govt jumped in and said "all patients, no matter the source of their insurance have to be treated the same" you know.. fairness, equality - the race to the bottom.
so clapback again, insurance/providers said "ok so we're only gonna cover the 75% (or whatever that # was) for *everyone*, suck it uncle sam"
which of course got twisted into "you're only allowed to have so much Anesthesia time" narrative by the media instead of thats how much time they're paying for as a benefit based on govt guidelines and the customer would be responsible for the remainder.
and that my friends is what paul harvey used to call... "the rest of the story"
