Primary Scare Delivery

I recently looked into medical school curriculums and believe it or not, the procedures I’ve taken note to be most commonly executed by primary care practitioners aren’t really taught. Now again, I’ve never been to medical school so my question could be silly, but humor me please, when do they teach doctors how to surgically remove red tape? No-no, I know! It must be in really advanced Anatomy and Physiology where they teach you about all the parts of bureaucratic monsters and how they work (or don’t) together, right?

No? Well then it makes one point exceedingly clear: No one goes to medical school to sit on the phone with insurance companies for hours - arguing with people fresh out of high school about whether a patient’s MRI should have contrast or not. Sadly, let me welcome you to the world of primary care medicine, and if you think I’m kidding, just hang around your doctor’s office all day – that’s what I do. You’ll see.

You might not have heard, but there’s a large doctor shortage looming on the horizon. No one in medical school wants to become a primary care physician. This problem is further compounded by the fact the existing physicians all want to quit. A recent article published in a highly respected medical journal stated that over half of the doctors they surveyed would rather do something else if they thought a transition to other employment was feasible. Not to be selfish here, but from the patient perspective, that sure doesn’t sound like a doctor I want treating my mother. The reason behind this massive attrition that has doctors contemplating leaving practices they’ve…

Three Words, One Circus; Medicare Open Enrollment.

Three words, one circus; Medicare open enrollment. On the surface, the goal seems simple enough: provide health care services for senior citizens and those who are permanently disabled. Subcutaneous exploration reveals a dark labyrinth of confusion, full of dubious pitfalls and misinformation, with little explanation for those who take time to seek it. Every year most Americans go shopping for health insurance, they call it open enrollment, and for working people who receive benefits through their employer based plans, a lot of the shopping has already been done. Still, many people find it very confusing and difficult to think through the limited amount of decision making they are left to make. Seniors have it worse; they don’t have a human resource department with trained people to make decisions; they have to do it all themselves. Making it worse, insurance companies that provide medicare benefits have to market their products to individuals like any other product, sell sell sell. Now, if seniors were well informed and companies always acted with integrity the environment might not be as threatening, but the current system has created exactly the opposite situation, and plenty of companies try to take advantage of trusting, ill informed Medicare enrollees.

Over time, many managed care organizations have carved out specific benefits to other organizations. For instance, most people have a vision plan, a dental plan, etc. Medicare is no different. The one benefit that has been carved out but is just a little different in nature than the others is the pharmacy benefit. The dental plan wants you to have great teeth, the vision plan wants your eyes to be fine. It’s in their best…