I don't know how many "requests for substantiation" of FSA claims I've gotten (really they're demands), but I do know that there is something odd when the administrator can't apparently figure out that "Minnesota Children's Clinic" or "Chaska Dental Clinic" might actually be selling eligible medical and dental care, not power tools, beer, or motorcycles.
Surreal.
Even more surreal; we reward the guys who come up with these bureaucratic nightmares by giving them big offices, prestigious titles, and large paychecks. I would have thought that a trip to Singapore for a caning would be more appropriate, but maybe that's just me.
The DFL: Bouncing The Rubble Of Rural MN Healthcare
-
Canny observers have been pointing out for years that the DFL protests too
much when it comes to Big Pharma. Particularly Angie Craig, who perennially
face...
7 hours ago
5 comments:
Yeah, but there's nothing in the law that prevents your wife's brother-in-law's ex-uncle's pool buddy from from calling his custom auto paint and tattoo shop "Joe's Medical Supply." Sure, it would be fraudulent to try to to collect FSA monies that way, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility that someone would come up with such scheme. Hence the need for spot-check substantiation.
Try to start a "medical supply" or "clinic" in your state without getting proper approval from state authorities, dear sister.
With far less effort, you could approve all bills from an awful lot of clinics and hospitals.
Why not?
I don't know...I think that if I didn't actually offer medical services, I could call my business what I wanted. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe you're right -- my experience is with pharmacies and I know they're fussy about what they call themselves.
But do you really need approval to set up a shop and sell wheelchairs and Ace bandages and call it "medical supply" -- and maybe throw in some golf clubs on the side? There's no actual function occurring in the shop that requires any kind of licensure, so why would the business need licensure?
I mean, I know the authorities are fussy about what pharmacies call themselves. Until the supermarket pharmacies leaned on the legislature, it used to be illegal in PA to 1) have a "pharmacy" sign on a building wherein less than X% of the square footage was given over to the pharmacy department and 2) have a pharmacy department that had different hours of business from the rest of the store (which meant my Dad got to eat bites of lunch and supper between customers.) Rule #1 worked out in practice to mean that you either couldn't put up the "pharmacy" sign until the day you opened your doors (making for a pleasant situation of having a grand opening with the signmakers' ladders in front of your entrance) or had to hang a tarp over the sign until opening day (which I think was technically a concession on the regulators' part -- they could have forbidden even that.) Since these were stupid rules, it's good thing they got changed, even if it was at the behest of the big guys who drove the little guys out of business.
My take is that you can only call something a "clinic" that's not medical if you make it very clear that it's not a medical clinic--"vet" clinic, "golf" clinic, and such.
Even if it's correct that I could sell power tools as "Bike Bubba's Clinic," though, shouldn't people figure out that it's a whole lot easier to approve vendors than it is to approve each and every purchase?
Of course, you don't get the big paycheck and big corner office by saving people time and effort. You get that by building your own little empire, and you can do that by creating busywork.
Post a Comment