Gamer's

I have been noticing that alot of the patients that we see who are on Medicare and Social Security Disability are rather young. Many are under 45 years old. Being rather a cynic personally, I asked the front desk to keep track this week if they could how many patients I saw who were on Social Security and Medicare/Caid who met the following criteria: under 45, able to drive, talk on the telephone, and walk. The last three I included because I figure that if you can do these, there is at least some job that you can do. The answer they gave was a bit shocking to me. It was 18! I dont know if this was a high weekly number or a low weekly number. But still, 18! I am not sure what the truw dollar amount of full Social Security Disability and Medicare/Medicaid is but I can imagine both combined might be about $20,000.00. This is probably a very low ball estimate as these folks are receiving care that normally would have been covered by private insurance. Anyway, 18 time 20K is $360,000! This was in one week! No wonder Medicare and Social Security are going broke! I shouldn't have gone back up to ask the our front office staff anymore questions but I couldnt help my self. When I asked them about the number of people who met the criteria, they said "oh, yeah the Gamers". I asked why they called them that. They explained, "oh, they know how to game the system, they all are on disabilty for fibro". I said, "no, way, all of them?". They answered, "not really, two were on it for chronic fatigue". I asked why and they looked at me like I was a moron. "they have fibro and chronic fatigue because it gets you free money!" Great, we are all screwed!