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More Gold Plates

Oct 21, 2008

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The Los Angeles Times is beginning a three-part series on the health insurance mess. Part one, “An eroding model for health insurance,” discusses people who were dumped by their insurers for minor, treatable illnesses.

This is, of course, a problem that righties say does not exist. Maybe the LA Times is just making stuff up.

Update on my physical therapy issues — my physical therapy doctor says he will tell Empire Blue Cross that my leg came off, so I need a few more physical therapy sessions. We go through this dance all the time, he said. Of course, Empire Blue Cross will argue, “she can hop.”

Spotlight

3 Comments

FearItself • Oct 21, 2008 @12:02 pm

I saw a point raised somewhere (I don’t remember where) a few months back that is relevant here: many proposed reforms to the health care system would vastly improve the quality of physicians’ work life, because they would not be involved in a constant struggle with for-profit insurers to win coverage for patients’ treatment. Many (most?) doctors have to have at least one extra employee just to manage all the insurance paperwork that accompanies this struggle.
It always astonished me that doctors aren’t more energetic advocates for health care reform for exactly this reason. I doubt many of them enjoy “going through this dance”; the need to think about this issue all the time must be exhausting.
QrazyQat • Oct 21, 2008 @2:56 pm

In Canada before Tommy Douglas pushed medicare through, one of the many groups who thought it was going to be awful were doctors. They were dead against it. After it went through they changed their minds. It was terrific. Easy billing, far lower costs for office help, no need to look at patients as wallets, no chasing down late payments from patients or insurance companies, no dealing with collection agencies. Much better.
alto2 • Oct 21, 2008 @6:07 pm

My allergist had to hire someone just to handle all the paperwork required for insurance precerts (he told me this a few years ago when we were trying to diagnose a problem via head CT, and in order to get approval, I had to find out how many times I’d been on antibiotics, presumably for sinus infections–though it didn’t really matter). Insurance companies drive up their own costs by requiring all this paperwork, because you know that person’s salary is being paid from the fees he charges for services. No wonder we’re trapped in the neverending cycle of spiraling health care costs!