Personal Dork Assistant

What's Up, Doc?

No big surprise that the doctors are sick of dealing with HMOs (42% of doctors aren't taking new HMO patients at all), but now they're dissing the PPOs, too, and God help people on Medicare, since no doctor is going to bother after another cut in payments.

The newest frontier for an intrepid few physicians is to cut back dramatically on their practice and concentrate on serving only those patients willing and able to pay more for their care.

This can't be good, in the greater scheme of things. Well, if you want free-market health care, you have to let the doctors play, too. Although I think that a good number of docs would put up with the pay cut if they didn't have to deal with the nightmarish paperwork from the insurance companies.

Most of her patients now are required to pay their bill at the door. Those who have insurance are welcome to get reimbursement, but that is between them and their insurance company. Cortland does not have to hire an office staff to argue with insurers, or handle insurance claims.

None of this concerns the 41 million uninsured Americans. They'll get their medical care from the emergency room, where federal mandates requires treatment regardless of the ability to pay, but no federal compensation for said treatment. So the uninsured have no primary care to treat things before they get out of hand. The middle class bitch about the poor getting free healthcare, and the hospitals that train the doctors are being pulled under by the (free)load. I think this qualifies as a market failure. Ah, but health care isn't really a free market, so we just need to get rid of government regulations and subsidies and everyone will be happy. Or dead.