▪️Anyone with a brain should have known that there was probably more to the viral “they’ll stop paying for your anesthesia” memes. It turns out that the left, in their recent demonic rush to defend the murdering of insurance execs, parroted an advocacy group for members who make over $400k/yr over attempts to reign in surprise billing and bring it in line with current Medicare practices.
▪️Anesthesia is among the specialties with the highest proportion of “surprise billing” complaints because patients usually do not choose an anesthesiologist. Attempts to reign in this phenomenon have led to lower costs, particularly lower out-of-network costs.
▪️Because of the collective freakout over this on social media, Blue Cross backed off this, which the left is treating as a victory. And in their next breath will continue to complain about things like surprise billing.
🔹Here are the sources for the community note:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2782816
https://www.cms.gov/files/document/chapter2cptcodes00000-01999final11.pdf
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
