Why Maine SHOULD NOT Rush to Pay Hospitals

The state of Maine is a period of conflict. On one side, you have dumbass governor Paul LePage who refuses to pass any spending bill until hospitals are paid, and on the other side, you have the state congress who wants to add about 70,000 Mainers to the MaineCare system and also get bonds already approved by the voters placed in action. It seems that neither side is giving in anytime soon.

However, I believe that the governor is more in the wrong than the state congress. Here’s why:

When I was in the hospital for about a week a few years ago, I noticed that my bill had charges for things that I NEVER had done. The problem is that it is always the hospital’s word against yours. Since I had insurance at the time, I decided not to fight it and just accept what occurred on the bill. After the insurance was paid off, I still had nearly $1000 to pay on my own. Could more of this bill been covered by insurance if some of these charges didn’t exist? Quite possibly, but again I decided not to fight it. However, given that my bill was a 5-digit charge originally, it was still disheartening to pay as much as I had remaining. This brings me to my point. How much of the $400+ million is for services that were either not performed, overcharged for, or charged more than once for?

Another example of overbilling that I suffered from was that my own physician charged $200 every day for each visit even though he was neither treating me nor spending more than 5 minutes visiting me. These charges were added to my ever-increasing hospital bill.

I also wonder how much of the $400+ million is used to pay staff, board of directors, and CEOs. I don’t mind paying staff, but the other groups don’t need the money. Even worse than that is that many of the “local” hospitals are chains run by out-of-state companies. I found this out by seeing that the mailing address to send payments from my hospital went to Massachusetts, not a Maine address. Just how much money gets sucked out of state by all the states hospitals?

Overall, I believe that before one penny is paid of the $400+ million owed that a line-by-line evaluation be given and each item be scrutinized to the fullest extent. Of course, the government regardless of being either state or federal, is known for wasting money anyway so I don’t expect to see any evaluation be done and instead a blank check be sent to the hospitals to pay their bills. It is clueless people like LePage who would waste state money as he has done since he has been in office. Sadly, there is no accountability in Augusta or Washington DC therefore we as state residents continue to get screwed on both ends with things like roads not getting fixed while the governor awaits to pay hospitals piles of cash. Mainers should be ashamed of the way this continuing on with no end in sight. Personally, I would rather see the stalemate continue then overpay the broken hospital system..