The medical profession in this country is in a shambles! There are runaway costs, exorbitant fees and specialists for every ailment! Whatever happened to the good old days, when you just went to a General Practitioner for years for your annual physical or perhaps some sporadic medical problem, like the flu or a sudden back spasm, and they knew you and your medical history almost as well as you did?….You were able to build up a trust and mutual understanding, a personal connection between you and your doctor at a reasonable fee…But there is something more sinister lurking here….
Now everything is farmed out to specialists, and depending on the health care provider you have, you are lucky to even see the same doctor that you have been seeing for years, in many cases….This is especially true if the company you work for changes your health insurance plan and you get a new medical provider…If the doctor you regularly see is not on their approved list, then you have to go “out of network” to continue seeing them, at an extra premium cost….I believe the real villain here is the health care providers themselves, and the investors behind them. They have turned a simple thing, adequate medical coverage, into a nightmare of confusing choices and conflicting priorities…
An HMO gives you access to certain doctors and hospitals within its network. A network is made up of providers that have agreed to lower their rates for plan members and also meet quality standards. But unlike other insurance plan types, care is covered only if you see a provider within that HMO’s network. There are few opportunities to see a non-network provider. There are also typically more restrictions for coverage than other plans, such as allowing only a certain number of visits, tests or treatments.
A PPO plans provide more flexibility when picking a doctor or hospital. They also feature a network of providers, but there are fewer restrictions on seeing non-network providers. In addition, your PPO insurance will pay if you see a non-network provider, although it may be at a lower rate.
So to sum up, HMOs tend to be more affordable, but you’ll usually get less coverage and more restrictions. PPOs are more flexible and provide greater coverage, but come with a higher price tag and probably a deductible. It is all very confusing to the average person, suddenly forced to confront and deal with problems we never knew even existed, just a decade ago! The choice is suddenly being thrown into our laps, like it or not, as the health industry becomes increasingly fragmented and niche oriented….It is truly the era of caveat emptor, let the buyer beware!
There is also the seamy, shameful scandal of collusion and the unholy alliance going on right now between the pharmaceutical companies, the health care providers, the well documented Medicare abuses and the doctors themselves which are driving ALL of our medical bills sky high! The cost of a hospital stay has gone right through the roof, with $7 charges for an aspirin common practice, let alone an overnight stay…
We have learned through the years that with all these scandals, be it the pension bailouts, the dot.com busts, the underwater mortgage scandals, the old truism “Follow The Money” always applies….Somebody is getting very,very rich right now off of all this confusion and misdirection and outright gouging of the average American as it pertains to the medical profession….
Right now the American health care system is right in the middle of the most appalling, scandalous combination of price fixing and patient gouging eras in the history of the medical profession…Big corporations are ripping all of us off, and of course getting richer with every shady transaction, each and every day…Nobody seems to know what is going on, or cares enough to put an end to this latest blatant corporate money grab…. Remember the good old days, not so very long ago, when you could always trust your doctor?
That’s good, because those days are long gone now! It will take a serious, major non partisan overhaul by both Democrats and Republicans of the entire health care industry to unravel all the twisted threads and knotty problems, to rip the cover of concealment and duplicity off of whatever greedy group that is most profiting from the current scandalous crisis in the medical profession…
Why is it so hard for our elected representatives to put aside their petty differences and unite on this one major issue ripping apart the country right now? Can they ALL be in the pockets of the crooks and charlatans who are getting rich by preying on the weakest, most defenseless sector of our society? The truly sick people, old people, all of us who are too scared to die and too tired and sick to fight back themselves, who lack even the basic knowledge of what they are up against?
All we know for a fact is that somebody, some well concealed group of people hiding in their corporate suites, are getting very, very wealthy off of all this medical confusion and red tape, all this double talk and ripoffs of the average health care consumer….You can bet your life on it…
In fact, we all already are!
johnwhye 