Sandy Hook

Sandy Hook

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Doctor Blames Private Insurers for Demise of Family Practitioners

12 comments:

  1. Oh, but our system is the BEST!!! Just ask any moronic Jonestown Klanbagger.

    I have a doctor friend. He had to hire 3 people just to process insurance paperwork. He would FAR prefer being a salaried employee and not having to deal with the BS.

    "I didn't get into this to be a businessman," is what he told me. He also said "insurance companies will spend ten dollars to find a way to deny a dime claim."

    So much for "the best system." Soviet inefficiency at caviar prices.

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  2. Small family anythings are disappearing, not just family medical practices. As Pink Floyd put it, Welcome To The Machine. We're all being ground up and pooped out by this monster we've created called Capitalism. Capitalism = the worship of money.

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  3. Darlene's Hodgepodge has an article up with a very revealing look at US HC costs compared to the rest of the world. Worth the visit.

    http://darleneshodgepodge.blogspot.com/2011/04/health-care-redux.html

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  4. what Jolly said... back n the dark ages, when I participated in collegiate debate, comprehensive health care was a hot topic. Even then, the prevailing idea was that third party carriers were doing nothing but driving up the cost. merely google United Healthcare building and realize that there is NO ONE working there that heals or makes a person well.

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  5. The truth about the problem has been around a long time.
    The fear and misinformation presented by the Republicans to secure their corporate stronghold, is keeping Americans from doing the right thing.

    I have been wondering for 30 years why Americans choose to follow the the Republican idiots on anything - health care, fiscal policies, social policies, anything.

    For all of this we have to blame a majority of the selfish American people who have kept the lying Republicans in office for decades, even though the evidence of America's demise is clear.

    Rant over.

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  6. I've been hoping to find a way to insinuate myself between people who need to put food on the table and food retailers — in a way that puts lots of money in my pocket. You know, instead of people going to a supermarket and selecting the items they need, want and can afford, I for a fee will do the shopping for them. (Actually, I'll hire some minimum-wage workers to do the shopping.) My introductory fees would be very, very low. Later on, I would have to raise my fees, though.

    Even at the start, my clients might get different products and brands than they're accustomed to. Maybe even different from what they wanted. I do have to make a profit, after all.

    If only I could get the darned supermarkets to shut down their expensive stores and just have stockrooms that only I and perhaps a few other diligent entrepreneurs could gain access to (for a fee, of course — an expense I would have to pass on to my clients).

    If I can ever find a way to pull this off, I will soon have a captive clientele and enjoy infinite wealth. If people want to eat, they will have to go through me or people like me. They will have to pay my price. I'll hire lobbyists to keep the other alternative, nasty old big government, out of my "free-enterprise" racket.

    Who knows, in time I might even become as successful and wealthy as the CEOS, executives and trustees of the health insurance racket.

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  7. @JR: "Soviet inefficiency at caviar prices." LOL. Well said.

    @Mr. C: Too true. One has to wonder why anyone would even try to go into business for themselves these days. They do n't have the capital to compete and, as you imply, they just get eaten up.

    @okjimm: I wrote a short series on HMOs back in the 80s. At that time there were no doctors on their boards but I think that has changed somewhat.

    @Tom: Hmm, I like to think that we're going to go through some even worse bumps than what we're seeing now that we'll come through it in tact.

    @SW: My heavens, I hope not. Lordy.

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  8. I was there when the family practice died. Since it happened slower in SC than just about anywhere else, we were able to watch it coming like a slow-moving plague across the land: managed care.

    When the insurance industry controlled message comes out from the right, they couch it that the government wants to stand between the patient and the doctor.

    As a woman who's had the government managing her healthcare for the last thirty years (Tricare/Champus), I can promise you it is far preferable, far more patient-centered, and far less intrusive than the managed care that Cigna, United, Aetna, Humana, Wellpoint, or any other, offers to all but their most cadillac policy holders.

    Yes, there are doctors who stood against the Patient and Affordable Care Act, but they are likely some of the same ones who dropped the most managed insurers from their patient rolls (Medicare was nixed by those practices, too, and don't think they'll pick it up again) and found work-arounds, like forming their own managed care companies or forcing patients to pay huge sign-up fees and annual renewal fees for the honor of remaining in their practice.

    And then there are the ones with ethics.

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  9. Nance wrote, "And then there are the ones with ethics."

    Perfect last line for an excellent comment. I love it. Like the stinger on a bee.

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  10. @Nance: I don't know why doctors want to drop Medicare. It's been my experience that it pays the tab a lot faster than private insurers. I know a lot of docs who won't carry CIGNA for just this reason and because of the hassle over approving coverage.

    @SW: Ditto.

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  11. Hey, watch it with the Bee analogies there. ;)

    I call my docs HMO quacks. Have called them that for years. Think of all the docs who don't know any other way, because they're too young to remember what it was like before HMO's. We have, once again, Ronnie Reagan to blame for that one.

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  12. Leslie, any way you look at it, private insurers have screwed up our health care system! Insurance greed is NOT a p[rescription for progress!

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