Posted on 04/15/2014 5:13:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The only stress we had in those days was worrying about the outcome of a test or diagnosis. Yes, the driving around - I do it for my mother - is dreadful.
“If you seem to be getting a deal paying cash it is probably about what the provider would receive from the insurance company.”
Ah... that's kinda the point. In fact, that's precisely the point of my wife's surgery. It cost us the same with or without the insurance. With insurance, it was $15K with us paying a $3K co-pay. Without the insurance, it was a cash payment of $2,900.
Alberta's Child's comment was, "One basic problem with the medical profession is that a doctor provides services that most of his patients simply can't afford."
My point is, we're already affording these services, we're already paying for them. The idea that the insurance companies are actually paying the bulk of our health care costs, and we're just making a small contribution thereto often just isn't the case.
In my wife's case, the final cost to me for the surgical facility (NOT the doctor's fee, NOT the anesthesiologist's fee, but the actual brick-and-mortar facility, the actual operating room, etc. - one of those high-priced things we worry about paying if we had no health insurance) cost me the same amount with or without the insurance. The difference is, if I didn't have to pay for the “comprehensive” health insurance I now have, I'd save the cost of the insurance. Which is low five-figures per year.
Having health insurance didn't save me any money at all from what I actually had to pay. The idea that somehow I'd be unable to afford my health care if I didn't have health insurance is mostly untrue.
sitetest
Agreed. I have had a few good ones. Kinda hard to sypmathize with an asswipe who parks his Jag (with vanity plates that say something like Dr. Golf $$) diagonally across three parking spots.
>> being a lawyer can be awful too dealing with people screaming at you and unhappy
Yeah, except that lawyers are making people unhappy. It may be the lawyer on the other side but you don’t have to deal with an enemy doctor who is trying to kill you while your doctor is trying to heal you.
true
Wait a minute - I thought that there was enormous spate of suicides of bankers, or people who used to work at banks, or people who worked at insurance companies, or people who sold insurance, or people who did IT work for banks - that the 12 or so instances some morons had cobbled together was a worldwide epidemic.
Are all these doctor suicides a plot by the banks?
Please, FR conspiracists, explain the link.
I see your point now.
If everybody could get the same deal as the insurance company, few would actually need insurance other than catastrophic coverage.
“But don’t worry, folks, we’ll soon have all those nice foreign doctors to take their place”
Have you had any contact with Medicaid/Medicare docs lately? They’re already here.
As another reply stated, not a viable business model and here’s another reason: demographics. The locations you cite skew strongly to the very demographics that rely on either Medicare or Medicaid for health care. Throw in another slice that can receive VA services and your potential market becomes very small before you even consider whether people have the means for out-of-pocket services.
My doctor sits at a little desk in the exam room and types on a computer during almost the entire visit. She is so busy typing, there is no time to even look me in the eye while giving advice and instructions. It leaves me with the feeling that the visit is no better than a remote internet session.
Last visit, she even spent 10 minutes searching the internet on her computer for advice to answer a question that came up..... she asked me if I was taking the Vitamin D2 that she had prescribed. I told her that when I went to pick it up at the pharmacy and found that it was synthetic, I opted to instead go buy Vitamin D3 at the healthfood store and use it. She asked me why, and I replied that I had always heard that the real thing is better in several ways than the synthetic chemicals. She wanted to argue the point, so she began searching on her computer. She never found anything to refute my decision and was obviously a bit teed off, and typed frantically for a few more minutes. Most likely she was entering that I was not "being cooperative".
So now I need to try a different doctor next visit, but my choices on the Humana Medicare Advantage Plan are very limited. I miss the old "patient/doctor relationship.
And they cry all the way to the bank. I had a kidney stone and went to the ER for 1.5 hours. So far I have been out of pocket almost $3,000. $507 was from the hospital for a medical exam and then I get another bill for $1,018 from some PA for “services rendered”. $1,500 for 1.5 hours? Really?
This was two months ago and I’m still getting bills! I think they sent them until you balk.
“And they cry all the way to the bank. I had a kidney stone and went to the ER for 1.5 hours. So far I have been out of pocket almost $3,000. $507 was from the hospital for a medical exam and then I get another bill for $1,018 from some PA for “services rendered”. $1,500 for 1.5 hours? Really?”
I hear you. Same here, kidney stone. 1500 to the Lithotripsy place to walk in the front door, 2000 to the anesthetist, and a whopping 6000 to have my urologist stand there and joke to the nurses for about 2 hrs.
Problem with that is that system of practice depends on healing and promoting preventive health, it involves the patient in his own care, knowing his own body, psycho eomotional state, maintaining diet and exercise and healthy coping habits
A small town md takes care of his pts gets and maintains a reputation of healing and keeping people out of his office thriving on preventive practices of his pts
He does not swoop them into a controlling deceptive swirling atmosphere of a medical center
Doctors are not socialized nor educated for this. It is a sick system. That’s why the parasites Obama and Hillary tried to take it over and why republicans do not have an answer
And eventually the only pickings for the elites will be from the unwashed masses of doctors as well.
Then you’ll hear some screaming.
Precisely.
And, at least where I live, many practitioners and providers are quite happy to offer this price if they don't have to work through the insurance company.
sitetest
Government and the legal industry and quickly turning it into the equivalent of just another day at the DMV - except if you enter the wrong code you can go to jail instead of just taking another extended coffee break while the line gets longer.
No problem. The government bureaucrats will just import Third Worlders who will do it for less. Of course, there are a few downsides...
Pregnant woman dies after ovary removed by mistake [admitted for appendicitis]
In the larger picture it’s about denigrating humanity as a whole.
Try exercising your “Right To Healthcare” when no one wants to be a doctor ...
Good post
>”Almost all of the people in those pictures are wearing white lab coats. I wonder what it feels like to be a prop?”<
One man’s “Prop” is another man’s “Useful Idiot”. Obama has the ability to combine the two.
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