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lol. Well, since you feel comfortable getting nasty with me, I'll get nasty with you.
You say you have never seen outright abuse AND you work in a physician's office? Maybe you should get your eyes checked. Or maybe you are part of the problem. Since I don't know you, you tell us, because abuse is rampant, and to work within the field and deny this is insane.
My daughter had H1N1 and for my son's sake, I was in close contact with the pediatrician. Those phone calls cost me nothing. I was educated by a trusted member of the medical profession and knew at what point I would need to take him in. I knew my son and his situation enough to know there would be no late night ER visits. His condition is not severe and we were on top of everything at all times. He never got sick. None of us took the Tamiflu, however we all took measures to stay as germ-free as possible and to keep from infecting anyone.
How much does that Tamiflu cost? How many people are taking needless drugs, in general, because their doctor's office pushes it on them? How about needless procedures? Even sometimes procedures simply to keep themselves from being sued? Deny it all you want, but there are medical professionals who won't lie about the overall abuse, from patients to hospitals, doctors to insurance companies.
I find your disdain for those who wish to be informed and responsible utterly despicable.
Good grief! Disagreeing is nasty? Having different experiences is nasty?
I do not need my eyes examined; and I stand by what I said about not seeing insurance fraud in this office.
The protocols we used for H1N1 regarding who to bring in came from the University of Colorado Health Science Center. If your physician used a different criteria, that's fine.
You may think the phone calls cost you nothing, but they are built into the cost of a doctor's visit.
Where did I show disdain for people wishing to be informed and responsible? Saying that I am lying, and calling me "despicable" is a personal attack, which is against the TOS.
Great, don't go to a doctor, good for you. I wouldn't go to the doctor just for the flu either. However, in some people such as younger children, those w/compromised immune systems, the elderly, having the flu can prove fatal. Are they burdens on the system? Having insurance is a reassurance, it doesn't mean you go to the doctor everytime you start sneezing. I don't know of ANYONE that has insurance that has over utilized insurance. Personally, I think your argument is bunk.
And you are obviously not a doctor either. I admit patients from the ER and spend a considerable amount of time in the ER. Talk to any ER doctor and they will tell you that 50% of all ER visits are minor things that didn't need to be seen, or could have been handled in an urgent care or outpatient clinic. People don't have insurance so they use the ER. People come to the ER for anything. I remember when I was a medical student, a girl came into the ER because she had a condom lodged into her vagina. She was having sex that morning and couldn't get the condom out so she came to us so we would take it out. And what was annoying is that condom wasn't deep in there, I think she was too afraid to pull it out herself.
What especially bothers is that even now with these urgent care clinics and Minute Clinics popping up, people are still too cheap to pay $50-$100 to go to them and would rather wait 12 hours to be seen in the ER for free. The OP is 100% correct. If everyone gets free health care, the system will be abused.
The OP is 100% correct. If everyone gets free health care, the system will be abused.
Where does it say health care will be free? Are you talking about the health reform bills in Congress? Where does it say in any of these bills that health care will be free?
I also think the word "abuse" is being abused on this thread. What we consider "minor" may not be minor in the mind of the patient. After all, the patient (or most patients) didn't go to medical school like you did. That girl with the condom in her vagina probably doesn't know human anatomy. She was scared. Why would you take it against her if she seeks your expert help? Besides, isn't that how you make a living? So, I suggest you suck it up, do your job you were trained to do instead of demonizing patients who were seeking your help.
Paragraph 2: A few anecdotes do not make a case for anything, even from a doctor. What were his solutions? Hint: tort reform and selling insurance across state lines won't save much, if any money. Litigation costs account for ~ 1-2% of medical spending, and selling ins. across state lines hasn't helped with auto insurance at all.
You guys keep rehashing this same argument and you ignore our retort because it effectively destroys your argument. The actual litigation costs are small but that's because doctors and hospitals practice defensive medicine so that we don't get sued. When you are ordering several tests on each patient and performing unecessary interventions like C-sections to avoid litigation, those costs are increasing the cost of healthcare. So it's disingenuous to keep saying litigation is only 1-2% of medical spending. Right now, there is no REAL tort reform that protects doctors and hospitals in a good faith effort. Case in point, if a kid comes after hitting his head on furniture, we have to order a CT scan of his head to make sure there isn't an intracranial bleed. 20-30 years ago, you could let that kid go home because the likelihood of an intracranial bleed is incredibly small but because some lawyer successfully sued and won millions, every ER has to order a head CT now. Lawyers like John Edwards increased the cost of health care. Because of lawyers like Edwards, the rate of C-sections has increased exponentially. There 5 times as many C-sections performed today when compared to 30 years ago yet the rate of cerebral palsy has not decreased. If those OB/GYN's were protected from bogus lawsuits by people like Edwards, the cost of healthcare would decrease. In the past, we could let a person with occassional biliary colic go home but now anyone who presents with biliary colic will have their gallbladder removed just to avoid the potential for cholecystitis or cholangitis and thus lawsuits
And how do you know that selling insurance across state lines won't help? It has helped the auto insurance industry tremendously. I'm paying less for auto insurance than I was 10 years ago. There are so many cheaper auto insurance plans. Auto insurance is relatively cheap. Likewise, if people are allowed to buy plans and features that they want without extraneous features, they can save a lot of money. Furthermore, it will lead to more competition because states will be forced to offering more flexible plans to stay competitive.
Where does it say health care will be free? Are you talking about the health reform bills in Congress? Where does it say in any of these bills that health care will be free?
I also think the word "abuse" is being abused on this thread. What we consider "minor" may not be minor in the mind of the patient. After all, the patient (or most patients) didn't go to medical school like you did. That girl with the condom in her vagina probably doesn't know human anatomy. She was scared. Why would you take it against her if she seeks your expert help? Besides, isn't that how you make a living? So, I suggest you suck it up, do your job you were trained to do instead of demonizing patients who were seeking your help.
So she had to go to an ER to have it removed and take the attention away from patients who have real issues? She couldn't go to an Urgent care or see her primary care doctor? I suggest you think more intelligently instead of like a naive bleeding heart
We were referring to universal health care and thank god it's not going to happen now
So she had to go to an ER to have it removed and take the attention away from patients who have real issues? She couldn't go to an Urgent care or see her primary care doctor? She wasn't insured and didn't want to pay money to have it done. Of course, we the taxpayer paid for that. I suggest you think more intelligently instead of like a naive bleeding heart
You are arguing from your point of view, not from the point of view of the patient who has no formal medical education and no knowledge of human anatomy. Of course she should have gone to urgent care, but that's spoken from hindsight. But I would not call cases like these "abuse". They are the result of lack of knowledge on the part of the patient. Lack of knowledge makes one fearful of what one doesn't understand.
Do taxpayers foot the ER bill? Of course they do. But who are the taxpayers? Were the girl's parents taxpayers? Was the girl herself a taxpayer? Should she not have benefited from the ER she was paying taxes for? You make too many assumptions about your ER patient, assumptions that you have not established as being valid. You were being judgmental of her just because you saw she had no insurance and that her case was a "minor" one of a condom lodged in vagina (I even sense a tone of moralistic contempt for a "girl having sex with condom left in vagina"). But you don't actually know her personal and social circumstances, so for you to pontificate about "abuse" is rather silly, especially since you got paid for her visit.
And you are obviously not a doctor either. I admit patients from the ER and spend a considerable amount of time in the ER. Talk to any ER doctor and they will tell you that 50% of all ER visits are minor things that didn't need to be seen, or could have been handled in an urgent care or outpatient clinic. People don't have insurance so they use the ER. People come to the ER for anything. I remember when I was a medical student, a girl came into the ER because she had a condom lodged into her vagina. She was having sex that morning and couldn't get the condom out so she came to us so we would take it out. And what was annoying is that condom wasn't deep in there, I think she was too afraid to pull it out herself.
What especially bothers is that even now with these urgent care clinics and Minute Clinics popping up, people are still too cheap to pay $50-$100 to go to them and would rather wait 12 hours to be seen in the ER for free. The OP is 100% correct. If everyone gets free health care, the system will be abused.
Condom girl aside, the reason many people go to the ER is because they don't have insurance. If they had insurance, they'd go to their primary care physician or the urgent care clinic. I seriously doubt that anyone who could afford a $50 or $100 visit would choose to go to the ER instead. You may not be able to understand that lots and lots of people don't have access to $50 or $100, but that's reality for many.
As to the OP's orginal post, I rarely get sick enough that I need to go to the doctor, but I took my daughter to the doctor fairly often when she was younger. Strep throat can lead to scarlet or rheumatic fever when left untreated and what appears to be a bad cold in a little one can develop into pneumonia in a short time. So if you want to call taking a sick kid to the doctor "insurance abuse," go ahead. I call it being a good parent.
I also have excellent health care that I pay dearly for each month. I recently cracked a rib while trimming a tree but I did not go to see my doctor because I knew that I can buy aspirin without a prescription. Hopefully, the time my doctor would have spent writing a prescription for pain killers for me was better spent on someone frightened by a head cold.
Condom girl aside, the reason many people go to the ER is because they don't have insurance. If they had insurance, they'd go to their primary care physician or the urgent care clinic. I seriously doubt that anyone who could afford a $50 or $100 visit would choose to go to the ER instead. You may not be able to understand that lots and lots of people don't have access to $50 or $100, but that's reality for many.
There are numerous doctors offices that no longer take insurance of any kind. They are "cash only" practices. And while they will tell you they have lost some patients, they are still very busy - and they don't have to worry about getting paid by insurance companies.
They are charging 50/75 for an office visit - and people are willing to pay it.
I'd like to see more private practices do this. My wife, a physican, has discontinued taking medicare and she has said that she would consider going to all cash -
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