Insurance is what's wrong in medicine today

I mentioned previously that I thought there was no cure for the health care crisis unless we found some way to get rid of the insurance companies--THEY are the health care crisis.

This was in the news today:

"Of the 12,000 respondents, 49 percent said they'd consider leaving medicine. Many said they are overwhelmed with their practices, not because they have too many patients, but because there's too much red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies." http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/11/17/primary.care.doctors.study/

Looks like the crisis is just about to get worse. The Insurance companies are driving doctors out of medicine, causing an enormous crisis and worse care in America, theoretically because nobody is overseeing the care of each patient (which is what a primary care doctor is supposed to do). If 30,000 of these doctors leave the business because of the insurance companies, that exacerbates an already serious problem.

Already the insurance companies don't let doctors give the care they feel is necessary. Already they approve care after patients have died when the care was available and the doctors were anxious to give it. Already they force the poor and needy into the emergency rooms, overwhelming the hospitals with non-emergencies and non-paying patients. Already they cancel or refuse coverage for the people who need it most (those who are sick). Already they pay their own doctors to say what benefits the insurance companies, denying claims of the injured (in accidents--like those who need workers' comp coverage) and destroying lives. And they do all this because they 1) have no medical training, and 2) are driven primarily by profit.

Now they're driving the doctors out of the business altogether.

And we're letting them because they are paying our politicians, and nobody can think of a plan that will provide excellent care without either letting the insurance companies run things, or letting the government do it (socializing things), neither of which will really work.

I'm still laughing that Obama's health care plan boiled down to 'put more people in medicaid'. Nobody takes medicaid except the incompetent and the new (not all of which are bad)--people who have no practice otherwise. Medicaid is a way for rich people to feel like the poor people have care. It doesn't actually work. It's a bandaid. People on medicaid suffer and die--literally--from lack of care. How is that going to solve the problem? "According to the foundation's report, over a third of those surveyed have closed their practices to Medicaid patients and 12 percent have closed their practices to Medicare patients That can leave a lot of patients looking for a doctor."

Maybe we should ask the doctors what to do, instead of asking the politicians. I'd go for this solution, mentioned in the same article: "In order to manage their daily work schedules, many survey respondents reported making changes. With lower reimbursement from insurance companies and the cost of malpractice insurance skyrocketing, these health professionals say it's not worth running a practice any longer and are changing careers. Others say they're going into so-called boutique medicine, in which they charge patients a yearly fee up front for care and don't take insurance.

There's more:

"...only 2 percent of current medical students plan to take up primary care. That's because these students are wary of the same complaints that are causing existing doctors to flee primary care: hectic clinics, burdensome paperwork and systems that do a poor job of managing patients with chronic illness."

"So what to do? Physicians don't have a lot of answers. But doctors say it's time to make some changes, not only in the health care field but also with the insurance industry..."

"One of President-elect Barack Obama's health care promises is to provide a primary care physician for every American. But some health experts, including Pocinki are skeptical. "People who have insurance can't find a doctor, so suddenly we are going to give insurance to a whole bunch of people who haven't had it, without increasing the number of physicians?" he says. "It's going to be a problem.""

Maybe the media and government are looking the wrong way in this crisis.

Apparently, doctors weren't too stressed about insurance until PPOs and HMOs came into being. I've always seen them as an institutionalized conflict of interest. Maybe all of insurance doesn't need to go. Maybe just insurance the way it is now needs to go.

I'm not a 'big government' person in the least, but maybe it's time not for the government to step in with some oversight--not of the medical field at all, but of the insurance field. Someone needs to reign in their power and put them in their place as servants of the people instead of as rulers of the world.