optoblog.com

Well, it appears that we Walmart doctors are finally going to get hit by the recession created by statist policies. Apparently it was announced at the W-M Health and Wellness conference that beginning this fall sometime, W-M optical staff won’t be billing the vision plans for us anymore. Currently, Wal-Mart pays me the same day what is expected to be collected from these vision plans, then they bill them and get reimbursed. Of course, insurance companies are notorious for saying the benefits are X, but they turn out to be Y, so they’re not paying what we all expected. I’m sure Walmart is looking for ways to cut costs, so getting rid of these insurance denials and chargebacks sounds like a great idea for them.

Considering that around 25-30% of my patients are Spectera and Davis, this is going to cause me a big headache. Now I’ll have to get internet access so I can bill them on their website. Then I’ll have to figure out what my privider ID and password are. Oh, and it takes a lot of time, probably an average of 10 minutes per patient, to figure out stupid exam benefits. Now that W-M won’t be billing them for me, they probably aren’t going to volunteer to find out the benefit information for me either. Oh, and most of these vision plans don’t even reimburse the full amount of what many Walmart doctors charge. So we’re going to have to increase our work and probably recoup less.

Most impacting is that my accounts receivable is going to skyrocket. It’s already bad enough dealing with BlueCross and their incomprehensible way of figuring out who has routine eye exam coverage and if so does that include a contact lens evaluation and what their copay is and does the deductible apply or not. Now to add more insurances that I can’t trust to pay me what I’m expecting and pay it in a timely manner…I’m just sick of it.

I hate insurance! Seriously, who ever came up with the idea of vision insurance should be sent to Guantanamo for domestic terrorism towards eye doctors- oh, wait, that facility is closing…so, maybe we’ll just give that person a really stern warning and then give them food stamps.
I don’t know if I’m going to re-credential with Davis. Getting through their phone tree takes longer than doing the actual exam!

I hope all of you that attended the 2009 Walmart doctors meeting Health and Wellness Conference in Atlanta had fun. I tried to register too late, so they put me on a waiting list, which I think is a generic term for sorry, you’re not going. 😥

Also I see that Walmartod.com‘s interactivity has been transformed from a bulletin board to a Facebook-like community. Looks pretty neat. I still can’t get logged in, but I hope to join in…someday. UPDATE: I got logged in just fine after an e-mail to support. Any rumor that I’ve been blacklisted is completely unfounded. 😉

Tags: Wal-Mart

KSL 5 Eyewitness news in SLC, UT reports that Algore visited with Mormon leaders because, “Since [releasing his movie at Sundance Film Festival in 2006], he often takes the opportunity to meet with civic, corporate and religious leaders around the country talking about the dangers of and solutions to climate change.”

Wow, I guess we Mormons should be thrilled that it took him three years to visit our leaders. And what’s laughable is that the only “solution” to “climate change” that The Left can come up with is increased taxes and higher energy costs. Nice.

Mormons as a whole consistently vote conservative. Personally, I can’t believe our leaders even granted him an audience, and further I can’t believe they turned off the lights at Temple Square for Earff Hour! We stand strong against gay marriage in Kalifornia, but then we appease with leaders of a cloaked fascist movement to take away our God-given rights? I think someone has some ‘splaning to do!!

You’ll notice that he met with our PR dept to give his schpeel. I’ll bet the PR department would meet with Lilburn Boggs if they thought it could remotely help with PR.

Algore, go home. We Mormons already know that we humans, made in God’s image, are the stewards over the Earff. No one is out there saying we should pollute rivers, lakes, and streams or cut down every tree in all the forests! God has provided this earth for our use and enjoyment to further His purposes. All this “green” stuff is a diversion to tax us into communism, and God does not approve of communism. The whole reason we are here on Earth is to exercise our free agency and have joy. The Global Warming-err,..Cooling…I-mean-Climate-Change folks seek to destroy both.

Tags: economy, politics, religion

I wrote an article for Review of Optometry. From what I’ve heard, it hasn’t gone over well with the donkey holes over at OD Wire. Wow, say something positive about Wal-Mart optometry and all the insecure bullies come out to shout you down.

Their shrill vituperation and gnashing of teeth doesn’t change the fact the practicing as an optometrist inside a Wal-Mart Vision Center is an awesome way to spend your career.

So, those of you who come to this blog from OD Wire. Go away. I’ve heard your abusiveness before*.

For you students out there considering a career in optometry, check out my article on how you could become a successful Wal-Mart optometrist also.

*(By the way, I am not inferring that all the comments in the above linked-to-posts are abusive. I deleted most of those.)

So the Utah Dep. of Health and the Associated Press sound like they are trying to raise funding. KSL reports:

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Utah Department of Health says the state’s American Indians are disproportionally affected by chronic health problems such as diabetes and asthma.

A report released Thursday shows more than 11 percent of the state’s American Indian population has diabetes. The average for all Utahns is about 6 percent.

Rates of asthma and smoking among American Indians are also above the state average.

The report says Utah’s American Indian population also has lower rates of health care coverage, prenatal care and physical activity.

American Indians make up about 1.7 percent of the state population.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

The AP doesn’t seem to cite their source, but I think the original report is found here (pdf), and it includes these important bullet points:

• Partner with tribes to obtain grant funding to benefit American Indians;
• and Eliminate racial health disparities.

You would think that an AP reporter investigating this state report might be a little curious why this could be. Because the AP is liberal, the only answer acceptable to them is that we discriminate against Native Americans and that we aren’t spending enough money.

The real reason would be to look the Native American population in Utah itself. The Uintah and Ouray Reservation has a small population- just over 3000, and about half live within the reservation. In fact, most Utah tribes are small. With such a limited gene pool in each community, you are going to get a lot of people with the same health risks.

So you will have to excuse me if I don’t join the liberal’s hysterics in a made up outrage.

I would suggest that if you would like to increase the health of Native Americans, try letting them transfer their health benefits to anywhere they want to live. If a Native American wants to move and marry someone from off their home reservation, they are denied their treaty-established healthcare at any other reservation. I’ve seen patients that lived in another state come back to their home reservation for a few months to re-establish residency in order to have an expensive operation paid for by their benefit. Not everyone is in the position to do this, so healthcare is probably under utilized by the many Indians living off their home reservation; however, if all the sudden you allowed healthcare portability for Native Americans, you would need to significantly increase the Indian Health Service budget.

To a degree, I think this happens already since Native Americans are encouraged to get on Medicaid/Medicare if they qualify. The IHS budget is so low that they depend heavily on income from Medicare/Medicaid. Of course, I would argue the IHS budget is low because of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act of 1976 that allowed one government healthcare agency (IHS) to bill another (CMS).)

Anyway, I just wanted to highlight this liberal tactic promoted by the Drive-by Media that calls attention to some pretended outrage and lays the blame on discrimination and not enough government spending when the real problem is neither. The facts are that the smaller the genetic variation, the more probable that certain health conditions will occur among that population.

For fun, here is a video of my boy dancing to the beat at an indoor pow wow on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation back in May 2003.

Here is another angle (he’s soo cute!):

By the way, for those of you not interested in reading the rest of my website, I lived in or next door to an American Indian reservation for over 20 years. I worked as a Public Health Service optometrist at the Blackfeet Community Hospital in Browning, MT for two years. Everybody admits that there are problems on the reservation, but throwing more tax payer dollars at it will never help. Seriously, if that were the answer, wouldn’t we have a utopia by now? LBJ started the War on Poverty in 1964, and it has been a 45 year quagmire. Let’s try conservative solutions for a change! Policy makers need to listen to the voices of conservatives, like David Yeagley, a descendant of Bad Eagle. And Rush, Sean, Glenn, and Ann.

Tags: Indian Health Service, politics

Kevin, M.D. says that

The retail clinic era is over, and … pharmacy-based clinics are doomed to fail.
Corporations are finding out what primary care doctors already know: it’s hard to make money only doing office visits.

Ophthalmologists make bank doing procedures. I guess the problem with the retail medical clinic is that the doctor is paid so much. I guess optical shops are lucky that optometrists aren’t as high up on the whole pay scale totem pole.

I have to wonder about the optometric profession, though. The student loan debt percentage delta outpaces optometrist’s pre-tax net percentage delta. How much longer will anybody want to apply for optometry school?

I guess we need Obama to bailout the optometry schools. Socialized medicine, here we come. Thanks for reading, comrades.

Tags: commercial, Income, optometrist, optometry school, politics

Walmartstores.com has a great website for doctors interested in practicing in a Walmart or Sam’s Club.

I started this blog in February of 2005. I can’t believe that I’ve had this website for that long. I’ve used WordPress the entire time.

I’m getting a little burned out of blogging. I’m thinking that I’d rather spend my time with my wife and kids. For now I’ll keep posting here and there- sporadically. If you’d like to buy the domain name from me, make me an offer. It’s a pretty good URL, and site visitors average 60 per day and page views average 105 (or 21,900 and 38,325 per year respectively). And if you go to Google and search “optometry blog” you will see that optoblog.com pops up number one.

I’ve mentioned before how there is a shortage of good, clean optometry jokes. Well, here are some clean ones:

What is a good name for an eye doctor?
Iris.

How come optometry students are so dumb compared to med school students?
Because they only ever get C’s on their tests.

How come eye doctors are so smart?
Because they were good pupils.

What did the myopic eye say to the nose?
I’m watching you!

What did the GP say to the eyeball at a party?
I’ll contact you later.

What is an eye doctor’s favorite type of makeup?
Masclera.

Tags: Jokes

I had misplaced a BlueCross insurance payment check at the bottom of a pile of papers. By the time I found it, I had missed the 90 day deadline to cash it.

The other day I got a letter in the mail. They were wondering if I needed it reissued. What was very interesting to me is that if I didn’t respond, the law required BlueCross to pay the money to the state of Utah!

So, I wonder if patients should be forced to do the same thing? Or what about doctors who owe patients an overpayment refund? Should we be forced to pay the government if they never cash the check? I guess it won’t matter soon anyway because the way things are heading we’ll all be working for the government. Thanks for reading, comrade.

Tags: insurance, politics