eye prosthesis

[AnnaE]

Is there any possible help for funding for an eye prosthesis? I have check in with Iowa eye prosthesis, and my insurance will not cover 2600 of the possible cost.

Thanks

[AnnaE]

Can you recommend an eye prosthesis provider who might take medicare?

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS]

No sorry, I'm not an insurance expert.

JCH III MD

[kg17]

Check with your local social services department, low vision clinic at a major University, or state vocational rehab services.

[AnnaE]

Thanks very much.

[AnnaE]

OK. Let's approach it another way. I talked with Iowa Eye Prosthetics. They are wonderfully helpful, but they do not take medicare. I don't blame them, of course. I will look for possible funding help, so that I could go there.

In the meantime, Can you recommend another excellent provider, perhaps an oculoplastics physician? Then I could contact that provider (those providers) and ask if they take my insurance.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS]

You can find an oculoplastic Eye MD at www.aao.org

You can contact medicare and see if they have an ocularist that accepts medicare.

By the way, if you wonder why MDs and others are increasingly not accepting Medicare. Reimbursement to Ophthalmologists WENT DOWN 6.7% on January 1.

Medicare recepients should contact their US Senators and Representatives and ask that some of the government pork and "earmarks" be spent on providing fair reimbursement for medicare services. It's going to get to the point that many excellent physicians will close their practice to Medicare patients or at least no longer participate with it.

In the 1980's Medicare paid about $1800 for a cataract removal/IOL insertion and 3 months of post-operative care. In 2008 they pay $678   try and pay your staff, buy state of the art equipment and pay malpractice insurance with fees heading south like that.

JCH III MD

[AnnaE]

I cannot believe how little medicare has paid my doctors. I had good coverage before I became disable. I though that my doctors would get 100% I was really wrong. They paid about 1600, including $400 from my good policy, for a 16000. retinal detachment surgery, which is now secondary to medicare.

Sometimes I wonder if doc#1 wanted to get rid of me for that reason. I know that's not right, but medicare payments are still is apalling. How could the surgery be worth it for any surgeon, financially?

I read on AAO, I thought, that the rates went up, big deal, not much. Perhaps that was an old posting.

I contacted medicare to find a doctor once, because I could not find one. They gave me a list of about 50 names. It turned out that only ONE of them took medicare. They pay this specialty about 30% less than other specialties. Who can blame these doctors for not taking medicare?

I am really worried about the future of medical care in this country. So many vulnerable sick people. We need good doctors so much.

One of my goal, after I get through this is to find a pt job with insurance (good luck there), so that I can drop medicare for a while and have good coverage. I need to find out if I can really do that, however. I want to feel that I am supporting my physicians in their efforts to help me.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS]

With cataract surgery it is near the point that the surgeon would be better off to just give up surgery and stay in the office and just do office work. Something is very very wrong because being the in operating room and operating on someone's eye, brain, heart, prostate is much more stressful and much more "risky" in terms of the army of trial lawyers that are trolling to sue for any complication.

I share your fear about Medicare especially when the baby boomers cause a ballooning of the numbers involved.

One simple thing that would help tremendously would be if Medicare allow physicians to charge more than the Medicare allowable. Then we would have free market conditions and the system might survive.  That's what they just started for "Premium" intraocular lens.

JCH III MD