- Joined
- Mar 5, 2012
- Messages
- 266
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- 188
As an attending physician in private practice, I've become increasingly frustrated with the ridiculous third party payer system in the United States. It's bloated, illogical, horrendously inefficient, and provides ZERO value to patients or physicians. Insurance companies are getting rich off the back of doctors and patients, all of whom absolutely despise insurance companies. Deductibles are going through the roof. Premiums for patients keep going up. Denials for care keep rising. Reimbursement for clinical services continues to decline. It's madness...
And yet no doctors or patients are doing anything about it! It's obvious that the government cannot possibly fix the problem. There is so much political gridlock and corruption of government officials from special interest money, that we will never see a common sense solution to the madness. Insurance companies are making a fortune on their current system of deny, deny, deny, and shift costs to patients. Obviously they aren't going to change the status quo. Which leaves doctors and patients with the option of either bending over and grabbing our ankles OR fighting back.
One thing that occurred to me today: why don't physicians collectively form a new insurance company--hell an entire health care system--that gets rid of all the craziness! Catastrophic insurance for all patients. Everything else is out of pocket up to a reasonable maximum for the year. Health savings accounts for all patients (tax free). Transparent pricing on a sliding scale based on patient income. Is it really that hard to create something like this? Has anyone else thought about this? If so, any interest in collaborating? I can't imagine we would have ANY difficulty recruiting physicians and patients into this sort of system.
And yet no doctors or patients are doing anything about it! It's obvious that the government cannot possibly fix the problem. There is so much political gridlock and corruption of government officials from special interest money, that we will never see a common sense solution to the madness. Insurance companies are making a fortune on their current system of deny, deny, deny, and shift costs to patients. Obviously they aren't going to change the status quo. Which leaves doctors and patients with the option of either bending over and grabbing our ankles OR fighting back.
One thing that occurred to me today: why don't physicians collectively form a new insurance company--hell an entire health care system--that gets rid of all the craziness! Catastrophic insurance for all patients. Everything else is out of pocket up to a reasonable maximum for the year. Health savings accounts for all patients (tax free). Transparent pricing on a sliding scale based on patient income. Is it really that hard to create something like this? Has anyone else thought about this? If so, any interest in collaborating? I can't imagine we would have ANY difficulty recruiting physicians and patients into this sort of system.