HEALTH INSURANCE

I'm a 33-year-old doctor, double board certified in pediatrics (kids) and internal medicine(adults.) I see a lot of patients every week. I'm up to my ears in the health care crisis.
Here's the problem with the promises for universal coverage etc. There is so much money tied up in the administrative CRAP! Here's what happens every single day: a patient (like you) pays insurance premiums. With that money your insurance company pays people (who have never met you, may have never practiced medicine, and/or don't even hold a medical degree) to interfere with the medical care I give you.
Here's a true scenario--it sounds ridiculous, but it's not. This really happened to one of my patients. It could have been you. What illness do you have? Say pneumonia. I want to prescribe an antibiotic BECAUSE THE DAMN THING ACTUALLY WORKS! But, alas, some jack-ass says it's too expensive (it was actually a generic, by the way.) So you go to the pharmacy to be told, sorry, you can't have it. Then you call my office, and my office calls your insurance company. I pay a nurse to sit on hold with your insurance company for up to an hour. We get a form. I fill out said form and fax it back. You still get denied and I get to "choose" (haha) another antibiotic....which I didn't choose in the first place because it wasn't the right choice...but whatever, you can't afford to pay cash, so here we go. One week later, you're not better, you're worse. You come back to my office, you get another x-ray, you then need a blood culture, a shot of antibiotics, and iv fluid because you're sick as hell with untreated pneumonia. All that costs a whole lot more than the original antibiotic that I knew would work. I finally get the approval from Joe Moron at your insurance company to give you the very same antibiotic I wanted originally, and you finally get better (oh, and you need a note for the week of work you missed being sick.)
Explain to me how all that saves cost? It doesn't.
You think the government is going to do anything better? They're not.
All of us, every last one, needs to put our foot down and say, "enough." The insurance company is denying coverage because of corporate greed. They want your money. They frankly don't care about your illness. Seriously.
We need to stop telling ourselves, "I want insurance in case something bad happens." Guess what? Odds are, you're not covered anyway. There's always a loop hole you and I are never told about until the bill is due. "Oh yeah, that's not covered." You'd really be surprised.
Meanwhile, my bill to the insurance company is $56.00. And I get told, "Hmmm, we think we'll only pay $16.00, and you can't complain because it's in our contract." I'm telling you, this sucks. And as a result, fewer and fewer bright young people are choosing medicine as a career. You get what you pay for. I'm one of the 65% of primary care doctors in this country who would probably have chosen a different career if I would have known that what I really do all day is try to figure out how to make my patients better DESPITE all the roadblocks your blessed insurance company erects.
So please tell your legislators and anyone who will listen, that more govenment programs and insurance coverage is not the right answer. It justs adds big time cost to a system that has the stupidest regulations. Tell them to spend their time elsewhere and get out the way of your medical care! That's what I'll be doing. Just as soon as I fill out another form and fax it back to your insurance company!