Friday, April 13, 2012

Follow-up to Aetna's Dumbest Denial of Service Award

(See 2 posts ago for background.) I try to limit this blog to nonpolitical musings on my health and my day-to-day experiences as a doctor, but these days, politics invades the practice of medicine all the time. In a previous post, I decried the behavior of Aetna in denying payment for patient's procedure contrary to their own written policy. Yesterday, I spoke to my patient's gastroenterologist. She had already called Aetna. It took a day of yelling at them over the phone, but they, eventually, conceded that their own policy supported paying for the procedure and went ahead and did it.

This is a shining example of why Robamney Care is a crock. Aetna just wasted hours of a highly-trained specialist's time. The doctor will have to charge everyone else more to make up for the time lost haggling with a moron, and the system will lose the benefit of several hours of expertise. Insurance companies are not designed to save money for the system. They are designed to save money for themselves whether they lower or INCREASE costs to the system.  They are not part of the solution. They are part of the problem!

3 comments:

  1. Hi -- I will write to you separately, but just want you to know that crazy stupid greedy insensitive illogical unethical decision making by health insurers LONG predates Robamney Care. This has been going on since health insurers went private and acquired stockholders, i.e., decades. This is known as corporate greed. (However, even non-profit Blue Cross plans sometimes make similar decisions.) Do not blame this on Robamney care. Blame it on plain old greed, as old as the hills (of Rome?)

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  2. I'm not blaming the behavior of insurance companies on Robamney care. Their behavior is inherent in what they are. I am objecting to the fact that Robamney care is binding these companies ever more tightly into the healthcare system while they contribute nothing but bureaucracy and extract ever more time and money.

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    1. Well, Tom, if SCOTUS strikes down Robamney care, maybe we'll have another crack at a public option! Or maybe we'll just go back to the status quo for another quarter-century ...

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