So far, I've only had one obvious irregular billing, but I, like most people, don't know how call BS on some of these non itemized bills. Phone calls get you the runaround from people skilled in telling you little. It soon becomes easier to pay the $40 bill than question every one of them. But you pay about 60 of them over a year and a half and $2,500 bucks has disappeared from the cookie jar. In New Zealand the whole medical system is electronic. Billing can be itemized and tracked. Patient histories and medications are available for doctors and emergency providers. It save them a ton of waste. My doctor writes a paper file on a clip board. It goes into an ever-thickening manila folder that is my medical record. If I have a medical emergency in Colorado, the ER doctor can't just login to my medical records, get electronic permission from my doctor, and be able to scroll and search for information on my medical history, allergies, emergency contacts, livng will, insurers, etc. No, all of that has to be handled by armies of receptionists and file clerks receiving phone requests, retrieving files and making many faxes to another army of clerks and secretaries. The ER doctor gets a pile of unsearchable paper hours later than he needs it and then it wastes his time to stop and read through it for the info he needs. Whatever happens to this bill, it is imperative to modernize medical record-keeping in this country. This is money wasted if there ever was.
this is the only decent argument i can think of for government health care, electronic records. i havent been to a non ER doctor in 15 years, and i have no idea where my records are. last i saw them, my pediatrician in baton rouge had them. and he died and who knows where my records went. they definitely are not in new york. i dont have any condition that matters, but if i did, i think the doctor here would be ignorant of it. of course i dont see any reason why private doctors cannot get my records online.
The range a couple of years ago for the largest insurers was 76-83%. Fifteen or so years ago, it was near 90%. Not only is the medical loss ratio deteriorating, even as publicly traded health insurers post greater profits, Wall Street analysts punish the stock as the ratio ticks up in favor of the people paying the premiums. The goal of these companies is thus to pay as little of the premium as possible for actual health care in order to maximize their stock price.
I program electronic medical records systems. The government and other regulatory bodies have already encumbered us with vast amounts of red tape in order to get "certified". This "certification" is tied to grant money for community health clinics to buy recordkeeping systems. It also costs medical record system companies around $40,000 and 6-8 months of development time to meet the standards. The standards (as of 2008) are very lax and really don't improve the situation as far as simplifying the transmission of patient records. Guess which city and state the main certification body is located in? Chicago, IL.
Nonprofit insurers such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana insure about half of the insured in this country. Please don't paint with a state-sized brush. :dis:
So do you believe or are trying to imply "non-profit" means rainbows and unicorns, or even worse, BCBS implies that? Here's the first sentence from a 2006 California Medical Assn press release: [FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]For the fifth year running, Blue Cross of California has spent less than 80 percent of premium dollars on patient care, according to a report released today by the California Medical Association. [/SIZE][/FONT]By all means, feel free to post more statistics on BCBS. I'd be interested to learn what they are, considering I pay BCBS about $300/mo for my high deductible HSA plan. (For the unfamiliar, that's the premium; anything I would put into an HSA would be above and beyond that.) What I do know is that BCBS fully engages in policy rescission. However, they didn't deign to attend congressional hearings in June, probably because they didn't want to disgrace themselves like the CEOs who did attend; perhaps they knew one of their victims (the 59 year old retired nurse) was to testify. I am constantly amazed the extent to which presumably ordinary people defend these scumbags. The only reason I stick with BCBS is because I don't want to start a new rescission period by switching to another scumbag company. Yeah, that's some "freedom" we got going there. :rolleye33:
Anthem BCBSCA is a publically traded company. Not all BCBS members are nonprofit.... BCBSLA is though. BCBS is just an association. As for your second point, insurers have an obligation to keep cash on hand in the event of a catastrophe whereby premium dollars dry up (like during Katrina, for example). I could give statistics on that but that is privileged information. So you are for patients lying on their health statements in order to receive coverage? That's because you are ignorant on healthcare and health insurance and don't really have all the facts. Maybe you should pull Sicko out of your DVD player. BCBSLA is the largest insurer in this state for a reason. They pay claims in a timely fashion, do business in an ethical manner, employ Baton Rouge and Louisiana residents (quite a few of them) and pay extremely competitive salaries. You'd do well to stay with them.
This is a point I constantly try to hammer into the hard heads of the ignorant. The vast majority, if not all, of insurers handle claims in good faith and conduct their business practices ethically and above board. Those that don't get run and quickly. People hate insurance companies because their only dealings with them are to pay them money and/or to try and get money out of them. Insurance policies are contracts and few people actually read them and understand the terms and the connditions that both parties agreed to. When the insurance company enforces the terms people scream that they are getting screwed. In reality, they are getting exactly what they bargained for.
