Whats different about LifeLine PLV's to a AEQ/Puritan-Bennet LP6etc.!! I don;t
know? I have problems of Honking vents. when I inhale un-assited/talk it honks! I
was told all PLV's honk!?
TTFN
Cindysan13(AT)aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 97-12-02 12:53:56 EST, mgeisler(AT)capecod.net writes:
>
> << 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.
-- Cody Namesnik http://www.netzone.com/~cody cody(AT)netzone.com