Medical Billing Codes For Injury Via Turtle Among Thousands Created by New Law

A new government law has created an unusually precise list of injury codes for billing purposes. Currently there are 18,000 standard billing codes; the new law would expand that list to around 140,000. If you've been injured at the Opera, walked into a lamppost, pulled something while playing a trumpet, or have been attacked by a turtle, there's now a code for that. From the article: "The federal agencies that developed the system—generally known as ICD-10, for International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision—say the codes will provide a more exact and up-to-date accounting of diagnoses and hospital inpatient procedures, which could improve payment strategies and care guidelines. "It's for accuracy of data and quality of care," says Pat Brooks, senior technical adviser at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."

Comments

Re:Make it simple

[SydShamino]

There are people who believe that, if something bad happens to someone, then that person did something to deserve it. The action to "earn" punishment might be reckless behavior, or the punishment could be divine retribution, but either way bad things only happen to bad people.

For that type of people, it's a justification for their belief that no one ever deserves a safety net in case all else fails. You might find that this drives certain political views.

Re:Good for insurance

[avandesande]

Statements like this make it clear that people don't understand the nature of the insurance industry.
They don't want to deny anything, as long as the other companies are forced to cover the same issue. That's why they want everything classified, so there is parity of coverage.
I know it sounds counter intuitive but insurance companies make their money by skimming a percentage off of every transaction. That's why lobbyists pushed through the HMO model, which gave them a 'vig' from small transactions that people could just pay for out of pocket. The higher healthcare costs are, the more money they make.

The important thing is that other insurers are forced to cover everything so they won't have an advantage by being able to deny things. Insurance companies want costs to be high so they can justify their exorbitant fees.