SWCAMBORNE

About six months ago I started getting advertising in the mail about Medicare.  By now I’ve received about a hundred.  See the picture nearby.  According to politicians Medicare is going broke.  According to doctors Medicare doesn’t pay enough to reimburse costs.

Follow the Money

But according to where the insurance companies are spending their advertising dollars there is plenty of money to be made in selling medicare supplemental insurance.

Complexity thy name is Medicare or diving in donut holes.

Except for joking about the “Medicare Buffet” I have put off thinking about Medicare its costs and its complications for as long as I can.  But now I’m within a hundred days of having to sign up and I’m starting to pay attention.  The first thing I discovered is that my countdown counter has been wrong about when I become eligible.  I am closer to the front of the buffet line than I thought.  It is only 87 days until the taxpayers are taking responsibility for paying my medical bills. I’ll see if Nancy H. my brilliant computer dude can change the counter.

Eligibility for Medicare doesn’t start on your sixty-fifth birthday.   It starts  (I’m not making this up) on the first day of the month in which your birthday falls, unless you were born on the first in which case your eligibility starts on the first day of the prior month. Fortunately there is a calculator on the Medicare.gov website.  All you have to do is answer about 10 simple questions and it does the calculation.

Next I’ll explore Medicare parts A, B, C, D and the mysterious donut hole.

“If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it is free.”

P.J. O’Rourke

Today I am officially a Medicare Two Digit Midget.  It is now less than 100 days until my 65th birthday and my turn at the medicare buffet.  Since I’ll be getting there before most of you rest assured that I will exercise restraint.  I will not take the last expensive hip replacement just like I didn’t take the last piece of prime rib at the wedding buffet. Ha!

I first heard the expression “two digit midget” when I was in the army and everybody was counting the days until they got to go home from Vietnam.  It is not intended to offend those who are height or digitally challenged.

Here is a link to my post when I became a “three digit midget.”

In the last few weeks I have received a couple of pieces of mail about signing up for Medicare.

I started a folder.  What else can I do.  259 days to go.  I’m not going to think about the choices until about 60 days before my birthday.  My hip has stopped hurting so the taxpayers can relax a little.

btw You are eligible for Medicare on the first of the month that your birthday falls in so I’m eligible on July 1, 2012.  Only 247 days to go.  Should I change the counter?

“A mother can take care of three or four children but three or four children can’t take care of a mother.”

Christine Leventhal

A very wise woman on the Prager Israel Trip during a conversation about taking care of elderly parents.

Today I celebrate just 400 more days until I get to the Medicare Buffet.

I can’t decide yet whether I will get the hip replacement or the bypass surgery first.  But one thing is for sure.  America can’t afford my (and the other 70 million baby boomers) medical bills.  I’m just glad I’m near the front of the line.

My Posts on Aging

The Countdown Timer

In exactly 800 days I will be eligible for the medicare buffet.  I and about 3 million others will become eligible in 2012.   My hip is starting to hurt but I can wait and so can the rest of my cohort.  But rest assured that we will all be lining up for new knees and hips. Read more or click on my official countdown counter to the right of the swcamborne.com home page.

So lets do the math.  Knee replacement surgery costs about $30,000 and about a million of us will need at least one hip or knee in the next few years.  That comes to Thirty Billion Dollars just for the orthopedic needs of people born in 1947.

What can you do about it?  If you are looking for a career go into the orthopedic supply business.  If you are an investor buy stock in the companies that supply this industry.  If you are a taxpayer hang on it is going to be a rough ride.

BTW It might be a good idea to let in a lot more immigrants to help pay for all of the above.

This just about expresses my concern about the government taking a larger role in the healthcare system.

One of the critiques of ObamaCare has been its proposal to use review panels to allocate medical resources to areas where the payoff would be best.  On a micro scale this used to be called triage and it makes perfect sense.  In Viet Nam when incoming wounded were overwhelming the medical staff on duty at the hospital where I worked triage decisions were routinely made about where to allocate the very limited resources.  Both those who would likely live without help and those who would likely die with help were forced to wait while those who would likely only live with help were treated.

I spent some time in the Emergency Rooms at Huntington Hospital and two different Kaiser hospitals this week helping my Father-in-Law through his latest crisis so I had lots of time to think about review panels, triage and allocation of resources.  In fact I also had enough time to read The Hidden Symbol, Dan Brown’s (author of The DaVinci Code) latest thriller.  I agree with President Obama that it is a bad allocation of resources to give a new hip ($40,000) to a ninety year old with a bad heart but I also agree with Obama’s critics that I don’t want “death panels” to be deciding if I get to live.  BTW by calling the “review panels” “death panels” the critics won this one on the name.  Think “homeless” vs “bums” we help homeless people we didn’t help bums.

I’m not sure that we will get to review panels and I’m not sure if they can work unless the incentives to providers, receivers and allocators of medical services change significantly.   For instance in the current model: If Medicare is paying, who at Kaiser would benefit from not putting another stent in a ninety year old bedridden man?  How would the man or his heirs benefit from not having it since the stent is free?  And what allocator would be able to defend withholding the stent against a crying grandchild on CNN?

We will need to change the incentive to all of these groups before any progress can be made toward controlling medical costs.  But don’t lose heart (we have stents for that),  I have devised the ultimate triage test and I will share it with you. (By clicking on the read the rest of this entry button I agree that Simon is writing what follows as a thought provoking joke and that without training I will not try to apply the test to real world situations) Read the rest of this entry »

I got this joke from my friend Wally G:

This is something to think seriously about.    Will I Live to see 80?
I recently picked a new primary care doctor.  After two visits and exhaustive Lab tests, he said I was doing ‘fairly well’ for my age. (I just turned 60.)
A little concerned about that comment, I couldn’t resist asking him, ‘Do you think I’ll live to be 80?’
He asked, ‘Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer or wine, indulge in chocolate or coffee?’
‘Oh no,’ I replied.  ‘I’m not doing drugs, either!’
Then he asked, ‘Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?
I said, ‘Not much…. my former doctor said that all red meat is very unhealthy!’
‘Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?’ He asked.
No, I don’t,’ I said.
He asked, ‘Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lot of sex?’
‘No,’ I said.

He looked at me and said…  ‘Then, why do you even give a shit?