On for-profit Healthcare

1/16/11

In response to a comment by someone on FB;

Their post-
“The USA is the only industrialized country in the world that allows a for-profit health insurance industry to exist and force it's citizens into bankruptcy due to exorbitant medical bills!! And the Republicans insist on repealing Healthcare Reform to return the status quo.”

My response--

One big lie that keeps getting repeated without challenge is "we already have 'free' medical care, it's called the emergency room". But I have not heard anyone talk about the fact that when you go to the emergency room, you get BILLED!  YOU are responsible for the bloated fees that they charge,which are usually much higher than if you had a regular doctor, or even a consulting nurse to talk to. If you own anything bigger than a toaster, you might lose it to a collection agency.

60 Minutes once did a report on how, over a few years, hospitals turned over emergency room billing to collection agencies. It used to be that you might be able to negotiate payments with the hospital. Now you get some minimum wage/commisioned genius on the other end of the phone reading from a script while bumping you up the 'deadbeat' ladder. They add interest and penalties as they are wont to do, until one day you come home to a foreclosure notice on your door. I think the report was aired before the major crash, and I kept an eye on the rising amount of foreclosures that were happening even during the boom.

-The other bag of hot poo that the GOP continues to try to sell us is that if you open up health insurance sales across state lines, it will nurture competition. But there are several flaws in that ointment (yes, I did spell it that way on purpose!) :

• If you don't have minimum standards, some state with NO oversight can let some company sell bare minimum policies that later might turn out to be as useful as a car without seats and a steering wheel.

• What's to stop the large for-profit providers from just opening up divisions under different names in other states, or buying the smaller companies out?

• When you get billed for an MRI when all you had done was a throat culture, who do you complain to for redress of grievances, the state health commissioner (if there is one) in YOUR state, or the state the policy is in? What if that state doesn't have oversight because letting the health care company police itself is how they got the business in the first place?

• How would you know that the company you're dealing with has not either set themselves up as a form of LLC or says they're part of an international company, thus not subject to US laws (like cruise lines)?

• How would this reduce costs of health care, or efficacy if you go into your doctor's office with 1of 65 (or more) different health care plans that his billing nurse has to spend most of the day researching to find out if they will cover your cholesterol medication?

• Will your doctor be forced under the avalanche of various plans to cut your face time from 10 minutes down to 5?

• Who will be in charge of making sure the doctors don't get screwed by the insurance companies?

• How will this prevent the sticker shock when you go to a doctor or dentist and get told, maybe even after treatment, that your company doesn't cover the treatments and 'will this be cash or charge?" ?

The mantra that if you leave business alone, it will police itself, or that “if you don't like the care you're getting, go somewhere else”, or 'do your homework before signing", assumes you have lawyers on call before you get hit by a car while collecting shopping carts in the K-Mart parking lot.