Long-Distance Relationship

One little-noticed provision of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act is one that will severely limit the right of Medicare beneficiaries to receive in-person hearings in front of an administrative judge. These hearings usually occur when there’s a dispute about whether Medicare will pay for a certain service. In the past, beneficiaries would usually present their case to a judge in person. Now, hearings will be presented via videoconference. This has a lot of disability advocates concerned, and rightly so. It’s a lot more difficult to give a judge a complete picture of a person’s health when you’re communicating through a television screen. Sure, you can submit a whole forest’s worth of medical records, but that’s not the same thing as letting a judge see a person’s severe arthritis or labored breathing. One quirk of human nature is that we usually react most strongly to the things we can see ourselves. A stack of medical records doesn’t measure up to seeing someone sitting in front of you. But these are tight budget times and certain sacrifices must be made, I suppose. Let’s just hope that the video screens are high-definition.