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 Insurances Not Contracted With MicroSpine

Medicare is a bureaucratic system that often is motivated by corporation lobbyists. There are separate billing codes for hospitals versus surgery centers and the large hospital corporations do not want surgeries performed in surgery centers since it means less business for their hospitals. The lobby is so strong that when we questioned the politicians about this matter, they didn't even reply to the questions. As long as large corporations run the government, these types of situations won't change. One might ask "Why doesn't MicroSpine convert to a hospital?" We would love to convert to a hospital but this too is regulated by the state government to protect the hospitals from competition. Why does an aspirin cost $5 dollars at the hospital? Because most hospitals have protective monopolies that prevent other hospitals from coming into their markets. It is a very un-American practice but, as usual, Big Business runs everything. We suggest that you contact your state of Florida representative or senator and request that MicroSpine be given a CON (certificate of Need) so that MicroSpine can convert to a hospital and thus accept Medicare entirely. Some ask why don't we operate on Medicare patients at the local hospital, but to do so would require us to double what we charge regular insurance patients to cover the lost revenue. Even if surgeries aren't being performed, nurses and staff want to be paid and thus any surgeries that are done outside of our facility only make costs for regular insurance people more expensive. Nonetheless, currently Medicare pays around 15 cents on the dollar and reimbursement is less than half the amount of our costs. This is why recently Dr. Mork decided to "opt-out" of Medicare. We didn't want to do this but Medicare itself doesn't understand their own rules and we would get different responses from different people which would amount to getting paid only some of the time. Unfortunately, at the end of the month, our employees want to get paid, utilities want their reimbursements, and the government wants their taxes and at 15 cents on the dollar for outpatient spinal surgery, Medicare just cannot be accepted. The IRS doesn't view "free or discounted healthcare" as charity and thus you can't even get a tax break for lost revenue. We are still contracted with Medicare for every other issue, except for Dr. Mork's services. We are continuing our attempts to obtain a hospital so that in the future Medicare patients can be done without any expenses. We truly want to help the elderly population but unlike the government, we cannot run a deficit and survive.
 

BCBS of Florida refused to contract with MicroSpine even after two State Senators, a State Representative, Three County Commissioners, Numerous Business Executives and Physicians requested that they contract with us. BCBS's response was that there were more than enough spine surgeons and pain management doctors in the area and thus they weren't looking to add any other doctors for the next 2 to 3 years. This is amazing given that there is a doctor shortage according to the government. Click Here to read the letters for yourself.  Nonetheless, we are continuing to address this issue and we hope that we will be able to work something out with BCBS eventually.
 

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