The fork: Medical Treatment and Insurance

Simple Truth

So this is basically how the system currently works.

We enter the hospital/doc’s office.

We either have insurance or not.

If we have insurance, insurance companies find reason to reject about 30% of patients.

If we don’t have insurance, the doc asks us to pay out of our own pocket.

Usually, most doctors (because they came into med to ‘help people’) dislike taking money from the poor, so they charge the bare minimum and do not profit at all. (Unless your well-off, they probably do charge you in full)

Therefore, doctors mostly get money from insurance companies.

Jumbled Numbers

Insurance companies are a business unlike a doctor who runs both a business and patient care.

If about 15% of American are uninsured, that means of the 30% of the 85% who are insured are not actually insured. This totals to about 35.5% of American are not actually insured. Which means about 1 in 3 people who come into the hospital are not insured/ or not getting money from the insurance companies.

Ridiculous, I know.

In order for a well-run doctor office to run properly (make actual profit), they fight the insurance companies to make that 30% into about 15%. And that is precisely where doctors make money.

NOT through ordering more tests than necessary or treatments that are not needed, but through fighting the insurance companies. Yes, there may be an extreme few who do actually do what the myth says, but doctors are educated individuals with ethics. In addition, a doctor gets sued once in about 6 years – where 70% are either dropped or lost and if won, the pay out on average is over $500,000. A kind of paradoxical thing the medical law suits in the US do: protect the patients from aggressive doctors and also hurt patients who weren’t looked at properly because of the protocols, laws, and fear of getting sued. I guess in the end, it basically comes down to: the rich get better health care than the poor.

The Paradox

In 2005, the United States spent more than 2 TRILLION dollars on health care. This is by the way 1/6th of the money we have in our piggy bank. with approx. 280 million people, that breaks down to about $7000 per person. Of the 2 trillion dollars, 80% is split between insurance companies and government. The rest come out of the people’s pockets (the 35.5% who are not actually insured). Wow, we pay $7000 per year on health care (through tax) that one in three people don’t receive. That makes me feel great, I’m helping fight other people’s diseases!

Works Cited:

Atul Gawande, David Studdert, Michelle Mello, William Hsaio, William Weeks, Jack Hadley

www.cms.hhs.gov/nationalhealthexpenddata

www.reformmonitor.org

More information on cited works will be sent upon request.

Laziness (I know, academically frowned upon)

Feel Free to Leave any comments/criticisms!