My wife is a nurse working for an insurance company. She is paid to evaluate insured members fresh out of the hospital with the goal of preventing any repeat visits. The insurance company would much rather spend $5,000 on rehab and rehab equipment, for example, than have their member return for another $60,000 hospital visit. She sometimes seems to be the only person reviewing the total list of prescriptions to check for adverse side affects or harmful drug interactions.
Insurance companies help to control costs. Sometimes that involves - gasp! - rooting out fraud. Yes, there are people who go to hospitals with false ailments to get drugs, or who seek a doctor’s justification to collect SS disability. She saw that often while working as a nurse in a large local hospital.
I’ve known people who worked in management at insurance companies. They tell stories of being told to reject a certain percentage of claims just to see if the patient will pay them instead.
I list out all my medications and run them through through an online "drug website" which does checking for interactions. Usually you will see there are interactions, but I guess that unless it's severe, some interactions are manageable.
Also, I have an app on the iPad which will do that. I suppose that the doctor has those computer programs on his terminal that does that, too. He writes out my prescriptions right in the examination room with me and "clicks" to send it directly to the pharmacy. The pharmacy also will have programs to check interactions, so I guess, from what I've seen in my case, it's covered all the way around.
locally... the poor use the ambulances for a free ride to that side of town.
SSDI is a major scam created by government. Obama loosened the criteria and its exploded. That problem will be solved politically and hopefully soon.
Good intro to hospital economics: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/12/lipstein_on_hos.html
All you wanted to know about SSDI abuse here: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.html