This article first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Little wonder we spend more money and get less health out of it here in the US compared to other first-world countries.
Nothing will be done about this.
Everyone is skimming. As said above we pay the most and get much less.
And yet, somehow most Physicians make donations and vote for GOP. The removal happened during the DJT era…go figure
Parasites can kill the host
The current CMT position is even worse than before: no regulation means that the payment processors can charge whatever they damn please. On the other hand, CMT does apparently regulate insurance companies, and they and the DoJ could quite plausibly go after insurance companies that take kickbacks to direct their business to companies charging predatory fees.
Insurers now routinely require doctors to kick back as much as 5% if they want to be paid electronically.
That’s funny. Because I remember when we were promised that eliminating paperwork and processing personnel would make things cheaper and we’d save money be going electronic. It’s almost as if giant untouchable corporations lied to us.
And when it comes to health insurance, they often do.
The only health care provider in this town controls all the doctors - ALL of them, because they promised to handle all the insurance and billing. Now if a patient has a problem with billing, or they’ve made a mistake, it’s the patient that has to spend time waiting on the phone for some low functionary in a different state to deign to communicate with you. All the while using their own code system so you can’t understand. It’s opaque on purpose.
And this surprises you?
2 situations cause me to use the f word
computer problems, and dealing with the health care system
Ugh. The fact that the Federal bureaucracy has become this hamstringed over the past few decades is why we have rising medical costs every-which-way-to-Tuesday.
As long as this grifting bullshit continues we can forget about Medicare for all. It’s a pipe dream.
But what the actual fuck - paying fees on money you’re owed? Jesus fucking Christ…
Mrs. Awiztherewas is a health care provider. It’s amazing how much administrivia has been added to the provider’s plates.
As a lawyer doing personal injury, I am in contact with a lot of doctors and I tell you that all the younger physicians do not make that much money and are saddled with overwhelming student loan debt. They cannot afford these fees, especially smaller independent clinics. Even in the larger organizations, their salary is dependent on how much they bring in which is why they have to see so many patients. if a patient gets to talk to their doctor for more than 10 minutes it is a miracle. The whole system needs to be overhauled and private insurance companies need to much, much smaller role if any at all.
They make a smart assessment of who is least bad for their personal economic interests.
It’s something of an issue that all laws have to be put down in words because words can often leave out nuances or miss intent. If there were a way to present full thoughts and intent in laws, it would alleviate a lot of problems like this, since it’s always going to be some people’s goals to find a way to interpret laws to their personal benefit, even if it goes in exact defiance of the original intent.
The only way around it is to explicitly include every nuance and intent in the wording of the law, which just makes it more complex and requires what has come be called “legalese” to try to cover every base, but it makes it nigh impossible for the average reader to interpret and understand.
They may make an assessment of who is better for their economic interests, but there’s nothing that guarantees their assessment is accurate. One of the largest flaws of libertarian ideology is the idea that people will most always act in perfect self-interest. That fails on two counts: one, that people always know what action will be in their best self-interest, and two, that people always choose to act according to their best interest.
In reality, people always have to make decisions based on incomplete information, which means that they can make bad decisions of their own free will, believing that they in fact made good ones. And of course, sometimes people are motivated to act not by their dispassionate self-interest, but by some other animating factor (i.e. it “feels” good/right regardless of how it will hurt/help them).
The problem is that most of the stakeholders beyond just the folks needing healthcare, especially for-profit insurance, take way too much rent out of the existing system to standby and let somebody change it.
AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!!