Health-Care Insurance Frustrations
30 04 08 - 15:00
John Connors's April 18 letter in response to Jonathan Kellerman's April 14 op-ed "The Health Insurance Mafia," asserts that payers and providers have a vested interest in maintaining the current health-care reimbursement system. Further, he argues that "the system" doesn't want patients making cost-benefit decisions because it is "inefficient" and "time consuming and distracting" for providers.
Mr. Connors must not be either a consumer or provider of health care, for if he was, he would be painfully aware of the bureaucratic nightmare my patients and I face on a daily basis. The referrals, approvals, documentation and denials that are interjected into my day-to-day patient-care decisions are what I find most time consuming and distracting. Moreover, my fees are dictated by the government through Medicare and generally do not keep up with the cost of inflation (half of my top 20 billing codes reimburse less today than they did five years ago). I must be too naive to understand why I have a vested interest in seeing this system continue.
Jay R. Newmark, M.D.
Chicago