Thomas Foley: “Several weeks ago a constituent of mine approached me to complain about her Medicare bill. I assumed this would be a…”

“Several weeks ago a constituent of mine approached me to complain about her Medicare bill. I assumed this would be a typical complaint about either how much she was paying for premiums or how much she paid for services. Boy, was I wrong. Her complaint was worse. She was concerned not about her cost but about how much Medicare was paying for a particular product she uses. As a diabetic, she is required to wear special shoes that need shoe inserts. At one time, the only type of insert available was custom made. However, with the wide use of these products, coupled with advancements in technology, many of these inserts are now available off the shelf which are the ones that she gets for herself. Looking at her bill, I found that Medicare was paying, on average, $50 a pair for these inserts. This is the insert, a simple Styrofoam insert. The shoes she is required to wear are $134. The inserts for the shoe, over $50 apiece. She is required to pay a portion of that and Medicare reimburses, for three sets of diabetic shoe density inserts, $190. $190 for these inserts. In total, the provider was getting over $50 per pair for simple inserts. If you go to the local pharmacy or grocery store, you will discover that these off-the-shelf orthodontics cost only about $10. Even these inserts, which I purchased at CVS, a local pharmacy, not to do a plug for the pharmacy, but you can get them anywhere you want, they are Dr. Scholl's, these were $16. They look state of the art.”