I tell them if they want to provide free health care to go to Cuba. If they want free health care to go Cuba. That is the end of discussion.
My initial thought is that the patient should have gone to emergency in the first instance.
Not really much to say when this is the upshot from these two geniuses.
Don't doctors take Econ classes as undergraduates, or are all those now taught by Paul Krugman types?
He could have been sent to India, Thailand or other countries where the original $10,000 would have been more than adequate!
Give these folks help, leave everyone else alone.
Surely it wouldn't cost a Trillion dollars to help these 10's of thousands.
“........We find it terribly and tragically inhumane that Mr. Davis and tens of thousands of other citizens of this wealthy country will die this year for lack of insurance.”
Seems to me lack of medical care rather than insurance is the cause. Perhaps if we all looked to the medical industry, and ourselves we could handle this problem without the government. Government has a tendency to get in the way of progress, and make things far worse than if they had just stayed the ‘H’ out of the issue.
NOT TO SAY the insurance industry couldn’t participate in this, but without government restrictions designed to impede, and cause a direction towards an agenda.
We have to get the government the ‘H’ out of our business period. It’s none of theirs. Look what they’ve done with the opportunity.
How do we counter it? Here’s a start:
1. Philosophically, in order for one person to get medical care without paying for it, another person must pay for medical care without getting it.
2. Go to a “loser pays” civil tort system; if you sue your doctor for malpractice and lose, you pay his legal expenses. This cuts down on “defensive medicine” and the attendant costs.
3. Charge everyone who gets a particular service the same amount. The guy in the story was billed $10,000 for one hospital visit. Had he been insured, the hospital probably would have accepted $2000 from his insurance company as payment-in-full.
There was a story going around a month or two ago about a guy who needed an operation, and was expected to pay the insurance deductibles in advance, which he couldn’t afford. He spent some time discussing the situation with the hospital, anesthesiologist and surgeon and ultimately paid cash for the entire operation in an amount less than what his insurance deductible would have been.
There’s a place in Oklahoma (Oklahoma Surgery Center) that performs surgery, cash-only for about 20% of what traditional hospitals charge.
How’s that for a start?
My initial thought is working full time and indigent don’t add up. Both he and his wife had full time jobs. Yes insurance for individuals is expensive and they truly might not have been able to afford it. But there are still offices that can take payment arrangements. His symptoms started a year before he was seen in the clinic mentioned. Why did it take him so long to take advantage of their services? Why didn’t he at least try to find an insurance policy that would cover hospitalization?
Access to insurance does not always equate to access to health care. Doctors in this story are the one who decided they could not examine the man let alone treat him unless he had insurance. They offered no alternatives to this patient for funding sources or even payment options. And they have the nerve to blame a lack of socialized medicine for this?
Guy goes to ER, gets admitted to the county hospital, attached to the local medical school, and gets admitted, worked up, operated on, and rehabbed, and sent home for recovery, chemo, radiotherapy, followup later. Hospital and doctors eat the bill, some covered by Medicaid, some covered by Medicare, and some passed on to those who do pay, with charities like The Little Red Door taking up slack. Also, most big hospitals have foundations that take in money and pay for care for poor patients. Surely you have had an appeal to give to some local hospital foundation. It is still happening this way in a large part.
But, if there had been, over the past 100 years, no government interference in either health care, or labor law, or this man's life earnings, then, the price of the workup, surgery, etc., would have been MUCH LESS, and the amount of capital he would have had available MUCH MORE, to the extent that he would have been able to pay for his own health care by cash (for the routine things) and having insurance (for the catastrophic things) all along.
The only answer to efficient health care delivery to the most people possible is by free market, cash-on-the-barrel, horsetrading, laissez-faire, economic freedom.
And charities will be able to handle the rest, especially in a wealthy country such as ours.
Are they, the providers, who took oaths, turning away patients who can’t pay? Where does their part lie in how much they charge for services? Where is their charity?
I agree something should be done.
Obamacare is no more the answer than the former situation. People are mostly now on Medicare or Medicaid, which both save themselves from bankruptcy by cutting reimbursement. Drs. (many) do not take these patients or limit numbers. Now, the govt. will dictate who drs. will see as well as what is allowed for each patient.A better idea than forcing pre-existing diseases on ins. companies, a much better idea would have been cross state competition and a fund for catastrophic conditiions that indigent could apply for. Cut out aid to a few Muzzie countries to pay for it.
As it stands, medical care for everybody is going to get worse, even for those with platinum plans (congress etc.)A panel led by the likes of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and Cas Sunstein, both of whom are on record for rationing and throwing seniors off the cliff (because they have had their chance, you know). And it will not be just oldies. Sunstein is on record that children under age 13 or so cannot be given pricey procedures because "THE STATE DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH INVESTED IN THEM" to make it worth while. We now exist, you know, solely to serve the state. And just who is "The State"? Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Ezekiel etc.
Did anyone watch Megan Kelley's interview with Ezekiel last night? The man is frightening, so d@#n sure he has all the answers, talking over Megan (per all libs), and dissing her questions. He is Rahm Emanuel's bro--go figure.
vaudine
People don’t die for lack of insurance. They die for lack of medical care. If they had lots of cash, or were treated at a discount or free, they wouldn’t need insurance.
Insurance is really, really helpful, if you have a good policy, but I think it is like the “guns don’t kill people— people kill people” thing. Insurance can do a lot to help, but, at bottom, people save people.
Mr. Davis should have said he was Hispanic.
I want everyone to have medical care, too. I just don’t think nationalized health care is the way to do it. That way leads to health care rationing and bureaucracy. The free market combined with private charity can address our health needs much better than top down government controlled care.
There are many problems with health care, and many of them are caused by government interference. Government mandates that insurance cover all sorts of things that customers may not want or ever need, and government mandates prevent insurance policies from being easily portable across state lines.
Insurance also isn’t meant to cover every expense. Try buying an auto insurance policy that covers gas and oil changes. Yet, we expect health insurance (or the government) to cover every medical expense? That’s really going to be expensive.
If the free market was allowed to set prices and people were allowed to buy insurance policies that were tailored to their actual needs, I think most of this doctor’s concerns would be answered. Eliminate the bureaucracy and the cost of care would likely be reduced considerably.
Finally, we have to remember that in a free society each individual is ultimately responsible for themselves. No one has an obligation to take care of me. I’m responsible for my own health care decisions, and if that means I have to work harder, forgo certain comforts to afford paying for care, or ask (not demand) my fellow humans for charity, so be it.
In the case cited by the doctor, we don’t know what kind of spending decisions the guy with colon cancer made before he got to his dire situation. A colonoscopy, for example, is far less expensive than treatment for late stage cancer, but the individual had to make that a priority back when he was healthy. Also, we don’t know the man’s medical history. Did colon cancer run in his family? Did he smoke (a big risk factor in colon cancer)? If so, then that colonoscopy should have been a priority over spending on other things.
Let me suggest to my fellow MD that this is a very small-n study, with strong heartstring tugs, yes, but little objectivity or understanding, which is ultimately designed present a naive political - not medical - opinion of the most damagingly left-wing sort.
Let me also suggest that there is no obstacle to this doctor paying out of his own pocket for treatment for people he sees.
Let me also suggest that there is no obstacle to this doctor starting a charity that targets medical professions and the rest of the healthcare industry for VOLUNTARY donations to support care for the indigent.
Instead, this doctor spends his time writing a propaganda article for a rag which, while prestigious as can be due to leftist media hype, is put out by an organization so left-wing that only 17% of MDs chose to join. His solution is to take money and freedom from the citizenry at large - at the point of guns, and under the boots of thugs and the watchful eyes of spy agencies - to do what he won’t do or try to do himself.
Coward with a cause.
Nobody forces a hospital or Doctor to bill for services. If they feel so bad, why did their organization take the guy’s last $10,000?
Something about this just doesn’t ring true - Kentucky sounds like it’s still in the 1950s — where exactly did this happen? Rural area,city? For the primary care physician to just drop the ball because the patient lacked insurance, that sounds really bizarre. Are there simply no resources in Kentucky? Mitch McConnell should be ashamed.
I live in a smallish city in SW Michigan where there is a massive federally-funded clinic, which is currently doubling its capacity, due to all the poor & uninsured people that live in this area. It is staffed by doctors and physician extenders, who for the most part are here for a 3-4 years to pay back their education loans. They serve both the Medicaid population and the uninsured. The idea is to provide primary care so that problems are identified early & TAKEN CARE OF IMMEDIATELY. If someone shows up at the ER with the problems described for this poor man, and diagnostic tests were performed to identify the problem, he should have been taken care of by the surgeon on call, if for no other reason than to relieve pain. If he were kicked out without any treatment because he doesn’t have insurance, that hospital should be liable, IMHO. Most hospitals are non-profits, and get huge tax benefits because they supposedly take care of everyone, including those who have no way of paying for the care (charity). Doctors and surgeons have on-call rotation with the full knowledge that they could end up with a patient that has no insurance, but they are obliged to provide that care. They can write it off come tax time, but of course, need enough paying patients to stay in business.
I believe that the major problem with the “system” is what to do with the chronically ill, including cancer patients who don’t have insurance for whatever reason. That is a problem that needs solving, and the so-called Medical Home concept could work if there are enough primary care doctors left after Obamacare decimates the whole shebang. The rest of us need to avoid the “system” as much as possible - ever notice the number of people dead or maimed for medical errors & over-medication? If you have an acute problem that doesn’t go away in a week, get it checked out. Very little of the care that goes on in hospitals is for life threatening conditions. The sicker you are, the worse the care seems to be - at least that is what I have noticed after working more than 30 years inside the Beast.
I tell them if they want to provide free health care to go to Cuba. If they want free health care to go Cuba. That is the end of discussion.
That evil heartless government! Was he too white to get medicaid?
This poor fellow fell through the cracks in the system. I suspect that there is a lot of embellishment and hearsay in this article being reported as fact.
I have been in medical practice for 37 years and I know of many ways that this man could have received care. The trouble is that none of his providers took the time to point him in the direction he needed to go to get that care. This isn’t the system’s fault - it is the fault of some selfish medical provider who wouldn’t take the time to help.
This article is from one of the most liberal medical organizations in the country so I would expect this kind of misleading story.
I hate to say it: VAT. Makes him pay all along since he was 16. Then he gets the care because he paid in.