Greatest Health Care System in the World
[Note for the Toronto commenter – I approved your comment, but it has disappeared. I have no idea what happened.]
Paul Krugman notes that some health insurance companies are discovering that they have priced themselves out of the market. Too many people and businesses have come to the conclusion that they can’t afford health insurance.
Among the people who actually provide health care, CNN reports on a doctor who wanted to practice medicine, rather than fill out forms for insurance companies:
PHOENIXVILLE, Pennsylvania (CNN) — After 22 years in private practice and seeing people “kicked around by the system,” Dr. Lorna Stuart found herself frustrated with the number of insurance companies and the rules and restrictions that came with them.
“The day-to-day time that I spent on paperwork was increasing, while my patients weren’t getting the good care that I wanted to give them — face-to-face time, one-on-one time,” she recalls. “I vowed to do whatever little I could about this inequity of care.”
For Stuart, that vow came in the form of opening her own clinic and treating the uninsured.
“Every single person knows somebody without health insurance,” says Stuart. “There are so many people that fall through the cracks.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 47 million Americans are currently without medical coverage. So Stuart set out to alleviate that problem where she could — in her old steel town of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.
When people look at the savings of a single payer system, many forget the paperwork reduction for the people who actually provide health care. The conversation is always about insurance, rather than the real issue, getting medical care for everyone.
Every medical facility and medical professional not part of the VA or military system, ends up devoting significant resources to complying with the rules of insurance companies. A single set of codes, a single set of forms, would save the medical care industry at least millions, and probably low billions of dollars every year.
2 comments
cost savings? i haven’t got insurance. my doctor takes 20% off an office visit, and my last hospital trip, they immediately offered to cut the bill by 30%, and were even willing to negotiate down from there.
my guess, from my various entaglements with the medical-industrial complex [this actually makes it a fairly educated guess], is that for-profit insurance adds 40% to the total cost of getting medical care.
At my Mother’s primary physician there is a list of which lab individuals have to go to depending on which insurance company covers them. My Mother can go to any lab she and the doctor want under Medicare, so the “government single-payer system” offers the patient more choice than private insurance companies.
Of course, the insurance companies are costing the actual care providers money, and they are reducing the choices doctors can make in treatment. Patients have to accept the “wisdom” of their insurance company’s accountants or pay out of pocket – that’s not much of a choice.