Ideal Medical Practices has a great post that describes how our doctors are paid by insurance companies. The post imagines your favorite restaurant joining over 30 different ”restaurant insurance companies.”
And then proceeds to describe the change in their life and their customers that results.
As I read through the painful description of what a restaurant would need to do to seek payment from these insurance companies I thought of this:
* 50% of our healthcare costs are generated from administrative inefficiencies.
That's a kind way of saying...bureaucratic procedures designed by the insurance companies in hopes of delaying payment or preventing payment to healthcare providers and/or their members. If you delay payments on average by...30 days, that results in a nice positive change to your cash-flow reports. And when you look at the cash in question upwards of $1 trillion...it's easy to see why these procedures exist.
The excellent post ends with this:
What was once an outstanding business that focused on fine dining and customer service has now been turned into a business in the business of trying to get paid. Alas, I wish this were a fictional tale, but it is not. The only fictional portion is that this is not your favorite restaurant, but your favorite doctor’s office, which is responsible not for meeting your dining needs, but those of your health.
NOTE: Some formatting errors were corrected on 6/3/2013.
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