From: silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: Health Care Costs
Date: 24 Nov 1992 02:48:30 GMT
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
Distribution: all
NNTP-Posting-Host: pangea.stanford.edu

soren@beauty.ssc.gov (Soren Frederiksen) writes:
>
>I don't want to argue that govt run systems are efficient, but I don't think
>that privately run system are necessarily efficient.  Several months ago my
>wife was involved in an accident, [...]
>We are getting buried in paper work. We have bills from
>every doctor who looked at her case, bills from the hospital, bills from
>companies that analyzed her blood, bills from the ambulance service, and 
>anything else you can think of.  
>
>What about medical insurance. Well,
>unfortunately and fortunately my wife is covered by both my medical insurance
>and hers. This is fortunate because hers isn't all that great, but unfortunate
>because now we have to send copies of every bill to both insurance companies,
>we have to fill out different forms for the two companies, they're almost
>identical (but not quite).  They need one form for every bill on which we
			     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>repeat the exact same information, which is a waste of time for us, and they
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>have to have someone read every single form we send them.  Everytime they
>get a request or bill from some doctor they have to inform us about it. They
>can't somehow wait until they get several of them to inform us, they need to 
>send us one form for EVERY piece of information.  Needless to say, we are
>getting buried in paper, and it looks like a huge waste to me.
>
>You would think that the "medical industy" would get together and simplify
>and streamline all this to make everything more efficient, but instead 
>they just raise our cost to help pay for their inefficiencies. 
	

	I've seen this too; my father was responsible for the medical
bills of 3 elderly members of my family during their long, slow declines.
He spent the late '80's wading through paper for them. He was retired,
and putting in 10-15 hours a week at times in order to get these 
insurers to cough up the money they were contractually obligated to
pay. My father is an extremely conservative man, but he has no doubt 
that this horrendous inefficiency requires some action. 
	The myriad complex forms, the redundancies, the many individual
bills for services which should have been itemized and billed in lots -- 
these inefficiencies exist in part to _impede_ the claimants' ability
to collect. They are not accidental inefficiencies. When serious public
talk about revamping the health insurance industry began to grab
headlines 1-2 years ago, I really thought that some of the multiple
forms and related procedural inefficiencies might be cleared up. 
I thought that the industry would act to assuage the public's irritation
by streamlining and coordinating their claims procedures.
	This has not occurred. There has been absolutely no sign of
any movement towards standardization within the insurance industry.
My belief is that, simply, the powers that be within the health 
insurance industry are not 'scared enough' yet. If nationalized 
health care were perceived to be a real threat by this group,
some introduction of efficiency might be seen. Either this 'fearless
fat cats' theory is true, or the present 'competitive' insurance 
system is so out of control that even the government might be able 
to do better.
	Either case ('fearless behemoths' or 'total ineptitude'), 
calls for regulation. I am no great fan of increased government 
interference in society, but the health insurance situation in the US 
is untenable. Something has to give, and it is quite clear from the 
inaction and 'business as usual' behavior of the insurance industry
that it will 'give' only if squeezed.
	
>So please don't claim that govt run systems are inefficient because they're
>not for profit, and private systems are efficient. I have not seen any sign
>of this so called efficiency.
>
>
>						Soren G. Frederiksen


--
======================================================================
|| Holly Silva			I have nothing terribly clever to say||
|| Applied Earth Sciences	today.  You're in luck.		     ||
|| Stanford University						     ||
Xref: sparky soc.culture.usa:8554 alt.politics.clinton:17277 talk.politics.misc:60441