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Insurance makes no sense. He should have been saving his entire life for his needs now, if he wanted all the expensive medical miracles when he's old.
But no, society said "Hey, spend your money now, rob the younger people later..."
Quote for either insurance or the care.
A retiring Medicare couple needs $250K just for OOP expenses before their deaths.
To get the bulk of our millions of poor and lower middle class people to save what it takes to adequately pay for their senior HC would be futile. They would all have to put money away in an HSA account roughly equal to the funding and cost of a house. And this is in addition to all the expenses they already cannot keep up with.
My guess? His doctor told him over and over and he didn't listen.
I don't know where you came up with that figure of 3 to 7 employees per physician to do paperwork. The office where I work has 5 physicians and two people who do that.
I said "typical".
There are some who have 2 other employees and 3 practitioners, and every patient gets 20-25 minutes a half hour visit with the doctor. (And, I've seen stories of places that had 9 "others" per practitioner. I have no clue how they survived financially.)
And they don't deal with insurance or medicare. They've discovered how to be real doctors - someone who is the patient's best advocate and friend - something I think the vast majority would prefer to be, if they just had the vision to do it.
The burdens of insurance and regulations, and the costs imposed play a HUGE part in this.
That story is not even slightly unique to me. It has been repeated millions and millions of times.
One person has medicare spend literally many hundreds of thousands for ineffective "life prolonging" efforts, while others are denied care for real needs. Why? The system is a bureaucratic nightmare, with tens of thousands of codes, a complex maze designed to consume vast amounts of time and labor and it denies more claims than ANY health care insurer, EVER.
Why? It is simply impossible for any command system to EVER be even remotely effective, efficient, or functional.
I have seen nothing like this. Caring for seniors/Medicare has been essentially my professional life of 40 years. And if it hadn't worked out favorably for the very vast majority of my patients I would have quit or worse long ago. I would not tolerate it if my patients could not receive the care they need and deserve. I have for many years found Medicare to be much easier to deal with than the privates or Medicaid. And like have already said, I am looking forward to going on Medicare myself in about 15 months.
A retiring Medicare couple needs $250K just for OOP expenses before their deaths.
To get the bulk of our millions of poor and lower middle class people to save what it takes to adequately pay for their senior HC would be futile. They would all have to put money away in an HSA account roughly equal to the funding and cost of a house. And this is in addition to all the expenses they already cannot keep up with.
I get it. You believe that if we just all pooled our money with the politicians in charge, we could all have new Cadillacs or BMW's and live in upscale houses, right?
We cannot "collectively" afford what we cannot afford individually.
And we REALLY cannot afford to pay the cost of of the demand when the price is nearly zero. I'm sorry you think that we cannot afford to save for our future, but we can afford to pay the price of everyone else's future they didn't save for and get for "free" (or nearly so).
The idea is preposterous to the extreme. There is only one real solution...
Individual choice, individual responsibility, and medical care which is tailored to the PATIENT AND HIS ABILITY TO PAY. Not what you can rob an insurer for, who then robs everyone else even more for...
I have seen nothing like this. Caring for seniors/Medicare has been essentially my professional life of 40 years. And if it hadn't worked out favorably for the very vast majority of my patients I would have quit or worse long ago. I would not tolerate it if my patients could not receive the care they need and deserve. I have for many years found Medicare to be much easier to deal with than the privates or Medicaid. And like have already said, I am looking forward to going on Medicare myself in about 15 months.
My guess? His doctor told him over and over and he didn't listen.
I don't know where you came up with that figure of 3 to 7 employees per physician to do paperwork. The office where I work has 5 physicians and two people who do that.
I have and share 2 and 1/2 close employees. And the 9 of us docs and one NP share 6 billers. I typically see between 3 and 4 patients per hour. And no one leaves without all questions asked and answered.
Most doctors leave crunching the numbers to their accountants. And thinking to politicians.
Which is why the typical family practicioner has between 3 and 7 paid employees each, whose jobs are to do paperwork and other completely unproductive work - ALL because of medicare, insurance, and government regulation.
It's why the typical doctor visit gets you between 3 and 8 minutes of face time with the doctor, who is supposedly attempting to "help" you, but can't spend long enough with the patient to do anything but scribble on his Rx pad and rush to the next patient.
Jeez, you mixed up so many things that I don't know where to star with this nonsense.
Billing is not the reason the doctors see you for 8 minutes only. After all doctors don't do billing themselves, neither do lawyers nor body shop owners. And yes, billing is "unproductive" yet every business in the world has to deal with it, its part of doing business.
The main reason doctors spend 8 minutes with you is because they are not paid per minute by per visit so they have no incentive to make you visit longer than shorter - after all the more patients they see the more money they get, plus they have contractual obligation with their insurance companies - government or ACA has nothing to do with it.
Another reason is that probably there is nothing wrong with you so doctors treat you as a pest, who keeps them away from the productive part of their day. Remember, primary care physicians are not there to cure or even diagnose your cancer or asthma - that's what specialists are for.
And believe me, every doctor knows exactly what helps and what kills their bottom line - that's part of education you get in med school and a big topic in the community and professional periodicals.
There are some who have 2 other employees and 3 practitioners, and every patient gets 20-25 minutes a half hour visit with the doctor. (And, I've seen stories of places that had 9 "others" per practitioner. I have no clue how they survived financially.)
And they don't deal with insurance or medicare. They've discovered how to be real doctors - someone who is the patient's best advocate and friend - something I think the vast majority would prefer to be, if they just had the vision to do it.
The burdens of insurance and regulations, and the costs imposed play a HUGE part in this.
I don't know where you are getting the 3-7 employees/Dr either. The Dr I went to when I was under 18 had a receptionist that doubled as a nurse and at least one more nurse for 2 Dr's. The ER clinic I went to for stitches a couple of years ago didn't have anywhere near 7 employees either. My dentist stopped taking insurance and has the exact same staff he had before - 2 dental assistant's that double as a receptionist.
I have and share 2 and 1/2 close employees. And the 9 of us docs and one NP share 6 billers. I typically see between 3 and 4 patients per hour. And no one leaves without all questions asked and answered.
And that would be atypical. Good for you. My previous (not current) PA nearly killed me, had I not rebelled and decided to take control myself. And I never got more than 10 minutes time.
The people I'm talking about charge their patients between 25 and 75 dollars per month for unlimited use of their services and tend to have all the time they need, do not have a roster of 7000 patients (or even 2000), but more like 300 to 1200 per practitioner. The patient can afford it without stress, the providers get all the time they need, and so do the patients.
Today, you can buy 'catastrophic event" policies. These are policies that pay out a defined amount for various contingencies - you know, the "big things". They typically run 100 to 400 / month, depending on how much you want. And it covers the entire family. That, and the pre-paid providers is vastly cheaper than Obamacare. Even when the government fines you for not enriching the insurer's coffers. It's the definition of "free market healthcare" and it is superior in all ways to the status quo.
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