02-13-2009, 09:37 AM
Litigation is just part of the problem. I work in a hospital and see how broken the healthcare system is. And it isnt all doctors and hospitals. Do you know why you get outrageous bills from the hospital? Because your probably overpriced health insurance company contracts with each hospital to pay a percentage of a procedure based on certain criteria. So that procedure that you got an itemized bill for say $10,000 for a particular procedure the insurance company has already contracted to pay 20% for so the hospital only gets $2,000 for so maybe when the insurance companies actually pay for a procedure the hospitals can actually charge less because they dont have to inflate the price just to get a portion of the fee and yes all insurance companies do this. So now just for you to get a cat scan we have to call your doctor have paperwork sent as to why we need to do this,call the insurance company fax them info just to say ok you can do this,if we dont do this and you come in and have the procedure done and we didnt get authorization from the insurance company first we dont get paid at all. This just adds to the overhead cost of needing employees just to do paperwork and finally we can get on with treating the patient. The insurance companies have way too much power today. Sorry for the long rant but I just spent the day dealing with insurance companies for patients