I just returned home from having a couple of preliminary tests done prior to a foot surgery feeling semi-abused AGAIN! The experience of going to see anyone these days for a medical issue is absurd, inefficient as hell, and a constant drain on all of our wallets. Doesn’t matter where, it’s the same moronic, hurry-up-and-wait scenario with lots of hoop jumping for everyone. I grabbed a coffee and collapsed on the couch fighting my anger, AGAIN, about how stupid the whole system seems, at how the cost keeps climbing every year to keep the share holders happy, and at how “WE” collectively bitch and complain about it every single year when we get whacked with another price hike or bigger copayment amount, but we collectively do NOTHING ABOUT IT. Ironically, I have to fight anger about this, and so many other issues these days all combining and trying to make me sick!
I flashed back and followed my own timeline thinking back to what I remember about healthcare growing up first as a kid, then as a young man, and later an adult who had only known a few doctors my entire life from birth to sometime in my late thirties! Back then, doctors seemed to really care about me, and their knowledge of my personal health history was refreshed in their memory with every subsequent visit, adding to the quality of my care. I remember no shortage of doctors, and I remember when doctors seemed to take their time with their patients, honor their appointments, not make their patients wait often well past their appointed time because they overbooked on purpose to increase their bottom line.
I remembered when insurance for one person more often than not was paid for by ones employer, and a family plan only cost $10/payday to have. I remember going to see the doctor and checking in for my appointment and not having to pay anything for my visit. They didn’t have copayments back then. I also remember often not having to fill out any paperwork whatsoever because they knew you, they knew your information, and they knew why you were there to see the doctor, which was simply specified or not when making the appointment. Saves time, paperwork, computer input, reduces frustration, and saves money.
Contrast that to the present. IF and WHEN you manage to get an appointment, often the doctor or “your doctor” isn’t even in, and you end up being seen by another doctor, or even a Physician’s Assistant, and the whole cookie cutter experience usually requires giving up all manner of personal information to complete strangers, and requiring seemingly endless explanations of what brings you to the office today, or how something noticed on your chart in your history happened. This all comes out of your doctor having never seen you before, and now all kinds of extra effort is required on the patient’s part to re-explain everything. Under these circumstances all continuity of care is lost or it’s impossible for it to form in the first place.
In true militaristic fashion, you are urged to hurry up and then have to wait, and wait, and wait some more. The rules are endless and keep shifting. Now that COVID has been with us for the last couple of years, there are even more rules. I think that doctors office’s, clinics, and other medical venues will be the last places on the planet to lift mask mandates.
For virtually the entirety of 2020 I was unable to be seen be any healthcare provider whatsoever until that fall, and then it was with a surgeon for a consult. My family doctor and the entire practice which serves a large region of Western Massachusetts and has 4 locations, with multiple doctors at each of them, shut down completely and were only doing virtual visits and nothing in person, and to this day are impossible to reach and calls go to an elaborate menu of options that lead to leaving a voicemail and no one ever calls back.
Currently, all of us in here in the United States have to fill out a paper questionnaire form in one office, but might then use an Apple iPad in another office. Once we are seen by someone, we are often then urged to start using the “patient portal” to communicate with the doctor, see test results and otherwise conduct business. The trouble is, these larger, multi-doctor practices are also affiliated with other, even larger medical corporations who oversee multiple family practice organizations and process all of their insurance and payment claims, like Athena Health and Cigna Health to mention a couple.
This “new way” is but one driving force behind people needing to get computers worth using, and then learn the skills necessary to use them, and also attain adequate knowledge about how to get around on the web and, finally, enough knowledge to be able to jump through all the hoops in setting up a secure login, and two-factor authentication, which many older folks have no knowledge about at all.
First, not everyone can or should be conducting business of such a sensitive nature online in the first place! This practice or requirement also disenfranchises poorer people, people who have less education, less or no computer skills, or the money to buy all that is needed AND pay an expensive monthly fee to have an internet connection. This also excludes many people who are suffering from some type of dementia, and would never be able to learn and retain what is needed to get their life tasks accomplished using computers.
Paper, portals, plastic, walking dead receptionists, and doctors that look burned out and act like they care, but they really don’t care. Plastic entry keys, devices, credit and debit cards, health cards, masks, ubiquitous, endless lists of patient rules on the walls, and online at their websites, and in the ubiquitous fine print. In healthcare delivery, we now ALWAYS lead with the money and then the paper or the digits and then the patient, but ONLY at the convenience of the doctor and/or the doctor’s office. Everything is always on their terms.
I absolutely hate giving up hard earned money to pay health premiums to a company that doesn’t care about anything except making more profit especially when, “Due to Covid,” every single wellness check that I’ve been scheduled for have been cancelled and moved forward another six months and this has now happened 4 times and it’s been over two years since I’ve been able to go and just have a physical!! However, even during the huge shutdown period of Covid in 2020 the insurance industry kept on collecting their money, even though people were unable to see a doctor!
It’s so odd that I’ve been able to have a surgical heart procedure which fixed an old problem, but couldn’t see my family doctor. I’ve been able to have my eyes checked and upgrade my eyewear at another eye venue, but couldn’t see my family doctor or the eye doctor at that practice that I usually go to!? I’ve been able to now have my teeth cleaned, but haven’t been able to see my family doctor!?
It seems that the procedures and the process of receiving healthcare in the United States have rescinded into a hodgepodge patchwork quilt of corporate greed and there is no end in sight as every effort to simplify the system has failed, and now several large corporations and insurance companies are, more and more, calling the shots for everyone. This is what results when healthcare is for profit rather than for the health and wellbeing of people.
I’ve said it before and this post is no exception: The United States of America needs a national healthcare plan that is run by the Federal Government. We all use ONE portal, have ONE card, and everything is done electronically to save money and protect information using encryption. We do not fill out forms. Doctors are government employees that are well paid for their skill level and knowledge, and make a really decent living wage, but are not going to get rich off of your demise. The super wealthy need to pay their fair share and when this finally happens, there will be more than enough to allow all of this new, national plan to finally be implemented.
The new way which is the ONLY WAY FOR US TO GO WHICH MAKES SENSE will be something like this:
Go to the doctor. Your card gets swiped. You see the doctor. You pick up anything you might need per the doctor’s instructions, and you recuperate. You do not have to pay a copayment, nor will you be billed. It’s that simple. You still live in a democracy. You still get to vote. You now save money because you no longer pay healthcare insurance premiums. If you need crutches, or a wheelchair, or dentures, or glasses, you get them and do not have to pay out of pocket for them.
What we have now is a multi-billion dollar, multi–portal, system where everyone wants to reinvent the way healthcare is done, and in the end, have just added to the confusion and noise and mess–more garbage to the trash heap of ridiculous profit and unnecessary expenses for consumers and it needs to stop once and for all!