Schrödinger’s billing codes

2 minute read


The source of all Medicare confusion has been traced to a quantum supercomputer.


The Medicare billing codes that GPs rely on to earn a living are generated by a quantum supercomputer housed in Professor Candid’s basement flat, it has emerged. 

This discovery solves the age-old question of why item numbers are so tricky to interpret for anyone without an advanced physics degree and a tolerance for flagrant impossibilities.  

“We’re familiar with the idea that weird things happen in the quantum universe,” Professor Candid told TMR.

“For example, photons can be in more than one place at once, matter can pop in and out of existence and cats can be both dead and alive at the same time. Well, all I’ve done is apply that science to Medicare billing items.” 

Professor Candid said he had built quantum uncertainty into the very fabric of Medicare billing because what an uncertain profession needs at a time of great uncertainty is even more uncertainty.

“The computer fills up most of my apartment now,” Professor Candid continued, though we didn’t ask. “At the last count there are over 30,000km of fibreoptic cabling and a dozen or so ceiling fans just to keep it cool. In fact there’s so little room in my apartment that I have to sleep on the floor and eat my dinner on the toilet.

“But I have built a hell of a computer. Now when a GP bills a level C telephone item then that item is simultaneously active and inactive, valid and invalid, acceptable and unacceptable.  

“In fact it’s only when you’ve been pinged by Medicare that your billing wave function collapses into a state of overservicing.” 

End of content

No more pages to load

Log In Register ×