<< So! I hear the story of more of us vent users being screwed by
medicaid/medicare. I do not understand why medicaid/medicare and other
insurance companies do not aggree to buying ventilators and then paying
for a maintenance contracts through the vent company. I do not get why
they would rather pay rent on ventilators at $1,000.00 plus a month.
Certainly it would be more cost effective for the insurance company or
medicaid/medicare to buy the vents outright and pay a yearly fee for a
maintenance contract. A Lifecare Vent sells for around the ,$8,000.00
mark so that is the cost of a vent every eight months per person. That
is totaly NUTS! I know for a fact that Respironics; the mother company
of Lifecare has a maintenance contract. How come the funding sources do
not concider this alternative? They must be thick in the head "Thick as
a Brick!"
Mark
>>
I think that the companies that supply vents have figured out the best way
for them to make the most money they can off of medicare/medicaide. These
suppliers have figured out the medicare/medicaide language and gobbledegooked
things up the forms so they can make more money they can. The middleman
supplier that coordinates the vent manufacturer with the vent user and the
vent payer is making all the money. They could never charge $1000 buck a
month for maintenence of someone else's $8000 machine.
I ran into the same type of problem with suppliers of wheelchairs. The
suppliers of wheelchairs would rather rent a person a rickety old chair and
charge an outrageous maintenence fee than allow the client to purchase a
higher quality user friendly chair.
chair. It was so frustrating! It really made me angry that that particular
company was making so much off my client's disability and providing such
lousy service!!! I had to fire them, get nasty and make them come get their
dumb chair to get rid of them. I could do that fortuneately because the
Veteran's Administration bought him the proper chair.
Hang in there Ladies and Gentlemen! Praise God from who all blessings
flow and ask His help, too. Cindy
There needs to be an organized way to lobby against this sort of thing.