Tithing

You might have gathered from my previous post that I place a lot of the blame on the health insurance industry – and you’d be correct.

You might even infer that I think that if we were to eliminate health insurance, we would save up to 10% of our health care dollar – and you’d be wrong. The actual savings would be significantly higher. How is that, you might ask?

As I mentioned before, health insurance carriers are huge bureaucracies. If you want proof of this, just call your carrier sometime and try to collect money on an overdue claim (don’t tell them you’re the subscriber – tell them you’re calling from a provider’s office). Dealing with a health insurance carrier, their voice mail systems, and their multitude of minions is one of the most frustrating tasks you can ever envision. Yet, this is what health care providers must do on a daily basis just to get paid properly for their services. It takes manpower to do this – a lot of manpower. Did you ever notice all those people working in your doctor’s office who have nothing to do with your care? Chances are, 80% of those extra people work in some capacity dealing with insurance billing and collection. Guess what? In larger offices, there may be an entirely different group of employees (the billing department) that you never see whose sole purpose is to deal with the insurance bureaucracy. These people all cost money – they need salaries, health insurance, retirement funds, computers, software, office furniture to work on and office space to work in. They need telephones and fax machines. They need to have their office space heated in the winter and cooled in the summer. All things that Good ‘Ole Doc Rusen never had to worry about or pay for.

It’s not just collecting on claims. There is a myriad of other ways that the insurance industry strains the modern medical office. Your doctor determines that you need to see a specialist? - Not so fast! Your specialist is not going to get paid unless he gets a Pre-certification from your carrier. Your carrier has decided that they won’t pre-certify you unless you have these additional tests (which your doctor – the one who went to school for this stuff) doesn’t think you need. More forms to fill out for your doctor. More time and expense. More running around and time lost from work for you. More money burned at the altar of the health insurance carriers.


Free Blog Counter