I recently had the displeasure of going to the doctor’s office. Totally routine check-up. No aches or pains, no fever, nothing particularly ailing me at the moment. I just try to go the doctor twice a year because I have “good insurance™©®” through my employer. The amount of legwork I had to do just see a doctor was awful.
I found doctors that were covered but their practice was not. I found a clinic in my area that the doctor’s were covered but the labs they sent their results to were not. Having to navigate through websites and compare them against my insurance coverage felt like I was trying to min-max a character sheet in an RPG. I can only imagine this being 9999% worse if I needed some real deal medical care.
I eventually found a clinic, doctor, and lab trio that worked with my insurance through their website. I drove (thanks American Car Culture) to the doctor’s office I kid you not, I spent MORE time in the lobby talking to the nice dude at the desk then I did with the doctor lady. Some clinic aids took my blood pressure and weight and stuff, but I spoke to the doctor-person about seven minutes before they bounced. Again, I know this is just a check-up but damn, seven minutes of face-to-face with a healthcare professional seems pretty bad. I spent maybe two hours doing all this legwork for seven minutes of actual care. I don’t blame the doctor-lady either, I’m sure she was stacked to her eyeballs with papers and forms and other patients. This system is so fuckin’ wack.
I want to live in a world, where I pay my taxes and I get healthcare (and I want to know my taxes go to covering other people, not the endless war machine). All the shit in life that doesn’t actually matter is pretty frictionless and easy, but something as important getting medical care is a goddamn dungeon crawl. There is so much obfuscation between patients and doctors it’s absurd.
Also reminder, private insurance is forever and always a business venture. Maximizing shareholder value is the ONLY goal of a business. Also the amount of bullshit jobs 
in MEGACORPS is absurd. They are tons and tons of layers of obstructions built into these companies by design. They even hire folks whose role is to find reason to deny claims. Just really rotten stuff.
I want single payer healthcare because it’s a rational and simple system. I want to go a clinic and get care. That simple. I want medical professionals to make choices about what sort of care i need, not some ghoul an a phantom office in Delaware.
It’s a real actually existing policy that would make people’s lives better. I know we live belly of capitalism, and the DNC and RNC are lapdogs for these companies but fuck I will still want it.
TL;DR - Private Insurance does nothing but get in the way. Insurance companies hinders healthcare providers ability to provide their services, and hinders people from getting the care they need. For-profit private health insurances are fundamentally bad.
yeah seriously. But the only way we’ll get it is a mass movement making demands that somehow outweigh the massive contributions from insurance companies. I guess a future dem (or in a really weird twist a republican) could be forced into a public option by outside circumstances but I just don’t see it. Like housing, it’s one of those pillars of capitalism that really keeps people desperate to not rock the boat
A possible nexus for such a mass demand would be a general strike. And by that, I mean a real one with leadership that includes buy-in from the largest unions like the Teamsters, Keyser Permanente, and ideally other unions coming together with clear demands of whichever regimes control congress and the executive when it happens.
Yea, but getting it is only 10% of the battle. Properly implementing and keeping it is the other 90%
My doctors will send lab test requests to whatever lab I need them to… even if they have a default lab, you should be able to request a different one.
They save it in their system, similar to how they save my preferred pharmacy, and I don’t have to mention it every time.
Obviously the correct solution is Medicare for All and abolishing private insurance, but until then I hope this helps.
Some doctors are contracted with a certain lab, and if you want to get a draw, they write you an order and you have to make a separate trip to a lab. And, of course, there’s plenty of room for errors between the lab and your doc’s office.
It’s the position I’m currently in.
M4A is good as a compromise/first step. It will cut back some of the rot, and agree it’s worth fighting for.
But you really need to banish profit motive entirely from healthcare. Until you fully nationalize all hospitals and clinics, you’re just going to see the same capitalists worm their way into those spaces and cause chaos.
They’re already there of course. We’re just not as focused on them because the insurance stuff is easier to focus on because it’s just so plainly parasitic.
I want medical professionals to make choices about what sort of care i need
Just as an aside, even under a fully nationalized system, there’s always got to be SOME level of utilization management between you and your doctor. Otherwise your doc might prescribe you the Steve Jobs juice cleanse for your cancer.
But as you said, as currently implemented, the standards are intentionally byzantine (and vary company to company) in order to push bogus “clerical errors” so that they can do more denials.
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