wayfaringmd:
about-hortense replied to your post: Great, lots more people are about to have insurance.
i don’t understand the meaning of that BUT. This topic intrigues me a lot and, as a non-american, I’d like you to stretch out ya point of view which, obviosuly, lingers behind that opening adversative.
What I was referring to is that there’s a huge deficit of primary care doctors in this country, and our system does not do a very good job of encouraging trainees to go into primary care.
Putting it simplistically, billing in the American medical system is based on procedures, tests, and the complexity of diagnoses. Doctors bill a certain amount for different things, and insurance companies generally pay a higher percentage of what doctors charge than government programs like Medicare and Medicaid pay. So the more patients you have with private insurance, the better your reimbursement rates.
The problem is that things like preventive care and regular follow-ups for chronic conditions (things which should theoretically save the system money by preventing conditions that require expensive procedures and tests) are not considered complex enough to warrant decent pay from government payor sources (Medicare/Medicaid). And guess what takes up the majority of primary care docs time? You guessed it, preventive care and follow up visits.
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Reading the medical-professional perspectives on and responses to the health insurance bill is very interesting.
(And oh, I am so so so glad to live in a country where healthcare is there for everyone and free at the point of access and doesn’t have to be practised defensively and doctors aren’t paid per test and med students aren’t charged more than any other uni student and I’m afraid of the moves the government is making to change this but still, oh, so glad for the way things are.)
