Congress should be forced to eat on a food stamps budget, and get their health care with a standard policy for a couple of months. Let them see how they like dealing with the systems they have created.
]]>The problem is that the patients are often not in any condition to deal with this crap. If someone is sick, they don’t want to be taken around to a lot of different places to be asked a lot of damn fool questions, they want to go home and get better.
Frankly, I’m getting too old to take people to the emergency room and sit around for hours while people are coughing and, sometimes, bleeding around me. Who knows the last time the place was disinfected? If you weren’t sick when you walked in, you will be. I realize that it is inconsiderate of people to not get sick between 8am & 5pm Monday through Friday, but it happens, and pushing everyone into the emergency room is a stupid concept.
If we had single payer, the smart money would be in walk-in clinics that were open 3pm-11pm Friday through Tuesday – when working people can go, and the elderly can still drive before dark.
]]>And trying to get health insurance for my son has been a real blast, let me tell you! Keep files on EVERYTHING because if you fill in one wrong bubble in answering the questions…..
.-= last blog ..Fuzzy math =-.
The hang up is that they have to fill in all kinds of information that only applies to individual insurance companies, but the software requires all the boxes to be checked and blanks filled to cover from the possibility that the insurance companies will be changed. Privacy laws prevent the information from being shared. Medical records laws require paper forms be filed and kept.
All that was really needed was two 9 digit numbers that are tied to everything else for the insurance companies, the doctor’s id number from the prescription, and a local address and telephone number, but there was all kinds of other blanks that had to be filled in that makes me doubt the sanity of some insurance companies.
K-Mart pharmacies have good software for highlighting drug interactions and for tracking allergic reactions, but most doctors are doing this stuff from memory and have their own favorite drugs, and their records are all paper based.
The local hospital has electronic records, but no one seems to be able to look them, including the medical staff. The bar-coding of everything in sight is a nice concept, but if you can see the records when you are trying to treat a patient, having the information is pretty worthless. Again, there is no sharing of information allowed.
The core reality is that there is no real system in this mess, which is stupid given the predominance of Medicare and Tricare in the area due to the large number of military retirees.
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