“You don’t want to devise an ingenious solution to a non-existent problem”. LOL, but it’s so darned profitable!
Certainly, there are plenty of honest mistakes to go around. But yes, a tremendous and powerful amount of efforts has gone into under-insuring or not insuring patients who actual need the care. From what I’ve seen, the disabilityi nsurance offered by many employers is one of the worst. Because, nobody reads the fine print until they actually need to make a claim. And only then do they find out how poorly (or not) covered they were all along. And I understand why many practitioners hate to deal with them - the paperwork alone is enough to make many simply refuse to deal with them. Part of my education on that began with a surgeon who was caught in that bind herself, and became a loud advocate for change. She lost everything and was made homeless. And although she finally got her claim through, she died not long after that. So, that’s another part of it. People will struggle unbelievably to keep working, because they (rightfully) fear the consequences of going on leave. And there is another near-perfect recipe for a mark. If their regular doctor can’t ‘fix’ this, then maybe somebody else can.
And yes - plenty of physicians visiting their own issues on their patients. The worst of it I hear is almost always patients with chronic pain or fatigue - which of course they can’t see, and won’t do any labs to prove or disprove. It’s much easier to simply accuse those people of being crazy or being drug seekers. I’ve encountered that myself, a few times. And that, pain in particular, will leave most anyone fairly incapable of exercising reasonable thought and action. It makes them desperate, and BAM! A new mark is created for the next ‘ingenious solution’ to come along. The right solution, of course, would be to become a strong self-advocate, and fire those who fail us - because there are also amazing and talented people out there, too. But most folks get intimidated by tradition, habit, or insurance companies being bullies - and then…you get a mark.
Most of these types of things are NOT going to get fixed by Obamacare, even if it works better than I expect it to. Because that does not deal with any of these types of problems. I’m not suggesting that many people don’t desperately need basic coverage - but having coverage alone won’t fix attitudes, prejudices, or the needs of someone who becomes too ill to work. I don’t particularly blame the practitioners for all this; I often wonder how in heck they can stand it!
