One of the great things about fall is that as I prune back the vestiges of my virtual garden I am able to collect basketful upon basketful of overly ripe metaphorical tomatoes, perfect for tossing at aberrant analogies and inappropriate idioms.
It’s a curious time. We give away money to the middle class and rich so they can upgrade their BMWs on the backs of the poor. The feds market that idea as though that pittance will either jump start the economy, or to hide the fact that that the administration has managed to budget for a nine trillion dollar deficit gap over ten years.
By now we know there are no quick fixes, no magic formulas for fixing the economy. Finding a formula that works will be more difficult than learning how to neatly fold a fitted bed sheet.
“Is it the essential paradox of the age of Obama that we have to destroy the village in order to save it, bust the budget in hopes someday we’ll balance it?” Nancy Gibbs, Time, September 9, 2009.
“It takes an idiot to raze a village.” Paul Roemer, today.
Congress is trying to decide what the final bill will look like without ever having read the first draft. How will we know when they have something that makes sense? Do we watch the Congressional chimney to see if the smoke is white or black? Does that mean we have a bill, or is it simply that the chef burnt the Peking Duck?
Then there are the payors. Get me started, or don’t. We all know that one of the driving factors for reform is the behavior of the payors. A friend asks—for full disclosure I note that she is one of “them”—why do people view health insurers differently from auto, life, or home owners insurance. She was serious.
Here’s my take on the answer. If the health insurance firms provided life insurance they’d be exhuming the deceased and trying to prove they weren’t dead. Car smashed, get a check. House leaks, get a check. Die, get a check. Need surgery. Not so fast. Let’s see if you’re covered for that. If not, whew. If yes, let our doctors decide if you really need the surgery. It won’t cost you a minute of your time as our doctors don’t even need to examine you. You see how this plays out?
It happened to me after my heart attack, albeit with my disability payor, sort of the evil step sister of the health side. My doctor put me on six months disability, naturally, the payor declined to pay. There doctor, who never examined me decided I was fine, at least that’s what their letter stated. How do we know these doctors even exist? Have they ever been seen in the daylight?
Most Americans don’t believe that insurance companies are interested in helping people. They like us fine when people are payors. They are much less fond of us when people become patients. It’s a simple matter of flow theory. As long as the flow of cash is in-bound, all is well. When people move to the dark side, from payors to patients, payors have no patience.
Is there anyone who believes that there is a single payor in the country whose mission statement says anything about doing all we can to help those who need us? Of course not. Payors have claims adjusters. What is their role? It’s certainly not to adjust the payment higher.
Do payors incent their employees to pay out as little as possible? I believe they do. Do payors penalize or retrain people who pay out too much? I believe they do. Do they design the claims and dispute process so as to make it so cumbersome on patients and doctors that parties give up prior to settling? I believe they do.
I believe the payor business model is not much different from that of tobacco companies. For years tobacco firms claimed there was no public evidence to support the fact that nicotine was addictive. It turns out they buried the evidence. Payors claim they are not bad actors. Some claim the moon landing was faked.
I am a firm believer that pictures can sometimes convey more than mere words. To me, this link explains a lot about what’s wrong with healthcare.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Forzj5-O0 Start playing at 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
