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Hellbender said:
There's one little problem with your theory Ozark, most doctors don't like Medicare because it pays LESS!

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Sure, if Medicare pays 10 times what a "procedure" is worth and health insurance will pay 15 times what it's worth - then doctors prefer patients covered by insurance.

But how would they like patients with no Medicare or health insurance at all, who make an average income and have to pay their own bills? I bet doctors would prefer Medicare patients to having to try and collect $100-a-month payments from people for years and years.

That Stryker Corp. I own stock in - the news today is there was a big investigation of the kickbacks medical device manufacturers give orthopedic surgeons to use their products. The problem is that the cost of those products is hugely inflated to cover the kickbacks, and doctors are doing lots of procedures that patients don't need in order to sell the products.

Stryker "cooperated" with the Feds and ratted out the whole industry.

It seems it's common practice for orthopedic surgeons to get manufacturer kickbacks often exceeding $100,000 a year in the form of phony "consulting fees", free trips, new cars, etc. Stryker promised to quit doing that stuff and also ratted out its' competitors. Now the competitors have to pay $351 million in fines and Stryker doesn't have to pay anything.

You KNOW that won't stop the kickbacks - smart people and too much money are involved, they'll just find a way around it. The ironic thing is that the settlement didn't say anything about lowering the prices charged customers. So now it puts those companies in the unique position of being told by the Government they have to KEEP all the money they were giving doctors in kickbacks. No wonder they settled.

And you don't think there's tremendous abuse, fraud, and overcharging all through the medical business? Ha - there's probably kickbacks on everything from drugs to wheelchairs to BandAids to tongue depressors. This is big, BIG business with government and insurance paying the freight.

Darndest thing - my Stryker stock went up a bunch today.

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