Friday, February 19, 2016

Sunset and Medicare Rules

Greetings Earthlings!  How are things in your corner of the world?  It's warm in Ye Olde Pueblo.  One wonders if we've departed winter for good.
We got behind this car the other day.  It's not a big car, but they have a big dog with a big tongue.  Most of the side of the car is covered in dog slobber.


We have a new string of lights, which are extremely cheerful.  They look like little hot air balloons, and coordinate nicely with the white and yellow lights.  Many residents decorate their palm trees for the entire RV season.  It's very festive.



Yesterday was overcast, which gave us a spectacular sunset.  It was the first good one in a long time. 


Today we learned something about Medicare - this is news all of the aged can use.  As you know, Jim has been in physical therapy subsequent to surgery to repair his ruptured Achilles tendon.  Since the beginning of November, Jim has also had a fair amount of pain in his left shoulder.  It reached the point where he can't lift his arm over his shoulder.  An MRI revealed it was not the rotator cuff (good), but there are some osteophytes impinging on the supraspinatus (bad).  The shoulder, like knees, is an amazing collection of stuff wired together with tendons.


Anyway, there is a Medicare rule that you can only have PT for one thing at a time.  So Jim has had to end PT for the Achilles (and we weren't really done), so that he can have it shoulder worked on.  Fortunately he'll be seeing the same person, so if the Achilles starts going belly up, we'll have to switch back to that. So, your take home message here is to carefully manage your health issues in order to meet Medicare payment schedules.  It's really kind of a pisser.
Other than this paltry offering, I have nothing else to report.

3 comments:

  1. My doctor told me the best physical therapy for my ankle was walking. No matter how much it hurt - keep walking. Good luck with the shoulder.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's a strange rule, but not terribly surprising. I have read that if you go to your PCP for a "well/preventive" visit, you should not talk about any maladies if you want the visit to be paid for 100% under the preventive clause of the ACA. If it gets coded up as any sort of a "problem" visit, then you may be back to having to pay for it if you haven't met your deductible for the year. So I'm very careful when I go to those checkups. Sorry to hear about Jim's shoulder. When it rains it pours!

    ReplyDelete