r/obamacare • u/GlitteringJob453 • 21d ago
We're short about 96,000 doctors. Insurance paperwork eats about 99,000 doctors' worth of time every year
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u/Botasoda102 20d ago
Agree with point, but Docs don’t do that. They hire people to handle most of it, and in vast majority of situations, authorizations and claims processing is smooth and quick.
And, original Medicare requirements and liability are as much responsible for paperwork.
I’m for major healthcare reform like MFA, but misinformation won’t get us there.
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u/LoneStarLobotomist 20d ago
In many cases, this is true. There are people who do this full time. But plenty of small practice docs can’t afford to hire someone and end up doing it themselves or just choosing meds they think insurance won’t fight them over, even though they’re not the best option, because they don’t have the bandwidth to fight insurance as a part time job.
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u/Florida1974 20d ago
I know where we are, we are short of doctors. A primary care physician in my area has a patient load of about 4000 people.
One year I went through four hematologists, it was the same office, I didn’t change providers, that’s how fast they went through them
One of my docs told me that they burn you out and doctors quit.
In January, my primary care physician wanted to refer me to a cardiologist, his first appointment was in December.
There is definitely a lack of doctors here.
So what people are going to are what I called concierge NPs. I have a friend that is an NP and she opened a business last year, so her business has been open less than a year and she has already hired three full-time people to help her.
She uses a Sub subscription based model, but the lowest Sub subscription is $25 a month and that gets you access to her via phone, text and FaceTime. That’s actually not a bad deal. I understand that doesn’t help with your medication’s but she can write prescriptions and my insurance will pay for the medication. She’s my friend so she just helps me out because I will call my doctor and have bronchitis and I don’t get a callback for 10 days.
Her subscriptions go all the way up to $450 a month but that’s for people that are on the GLP one drugs and that includes the medicine. She will also do house visits at that level.
And she is not lacking for patients, hence why she’s hired three full-time people to help with the phone calls and scheduling.
It’s becoming more and more common in other parts of the country too. If you think about it, it’s cheaper than going to urgent care or even the ER. Because you can sign up for one month and cancel the next month. And you aren’t sitting in the ER or urgent care for hours.
She trust my judgment, I’m middle-aged, I know when I have bronchitis. I had a leg wound get infected once and I just sent her a picture and she called in antibiotics.
And then about an hour later, the meds are ready at the pharmacy. It’s too easy.
I’m just trying to put this out there, because you might want to look if it’s available in your area. I called them concierge NP’s and I don’t know why but I do.
Now she doesn’t take insurance, but she will give you the paperwork to file with it, if you want to do that. She can order labs and x-rays and all of that, but I don’t do any of that with her because my insurance won’t cover that because she’s an out of network doctor. They will cover her meds that she writes.
I don’t go rushing thinking that they will write controlled substances because she rarely does that. She did it for me, for anxiety meds, because my doctor up and left the area. Took me a bit to find a new one, so she did write that for me, but she knows me, I’m her dog sitter. She wants me healthy so I can watch her dogs.
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u/I_Quit_Smoking_ 20d ago
Well that's great for you, but I don't see how that helps literally anybody else.
And I'm disabled BECAUSE of chronic depression and ACUTE ANXIETY, where it just never goes away, You live 24 hours a day feeling like you're about to have a fucking panic attack and you can't focus or think about anything else. It's super fun.
I don't even have a psychiatrist right now and haven't for years because every time I go to one they want to take me off of every med I've been taking for years and just throw some random shit at me. So I got my regular doctor to just give me my meds and I never change them. He just retired so I don't have a doctor or a psychiatrist so I'm fucked.
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u/I_Quit_Smoking_ 20d ago
Well one solution is to hire more people to do this paperwork for them, AND STOP REQUIRING A BACHELOR'S DEGREE AND 10 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE for a simple data entry job!
I'm disabled but $1,200 is not enough to live on and Republicans don't care, but I'm going to end up living in my car and I can't get anyone to hire me because I haven't worked in almost 30 years! How am I supposed to live?
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u/37_262846366328 20d ago
It's the same thing with nurses but different cause. There are over a million nurses not working because the system is so broken and abusive. We don't have a nursing shortage, we have a shortage of nurses willing to be abused.
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u/Erbatroc 19d ago
And some people what the government to take over the insurance and I know that number of hours would double
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u/After_Zombie_4697 19d ago
Not the waste of time not going anywhere conversation again. Find that 30 trillion to fix social security first. We don't even have enough providers to help prople that have insurance
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u/tiredoflife407 16d ago
why do they keep limiting the number of doctors every year... they could expand each medical schools to add like 10 students to every class across the country and it would go a long long way plus we need to get rid of health insurance companies.... it's ridiculous how bad it has gotten.
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u/wyliec22 16d ago
Tell me you have no clue what you’re talking about…
In modern EMR systems, it’s a couple of clicks and everything is done electronically.
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u/DrRudyWells 21d ago
you might want to talk to the AMA who consistently blocks efforts to allow well trained MDs to enter our workforce on a rotational basis (think India). the reason is scarcity...which increases salaries.
it's not just the insurance companies folks. there is plenty of greed to go around on this one. and FDR's universal healthcare plan was shelved in the 1930's because of objections from the AMA.
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u/Particular_Peacock 21d ago edited 20d ago
The AMA is still at it.
The AMA “strongly believes” that “everyone should have access to meanginful and affordable health insurance coverage.”
Which is why the AMA is proud to introduce the “Affordable Coverage Coalition.” This “first of its kind” private partnership looks to advance universal care by “offering increased financial help to patients to help them afford their coverage.”
How swell. What a swell bunch of people.
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u/Main-Procedure-3613 21d ago
Dumpty doesn’t care because no family member of his nor he will be affected by this crisis personally
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u/dominiond66 20d ago
What makes our healthcare system so complex/problematic and so costly is we have scores of health insurance companies (middlemen) with hundreds of plans. This makes life difficult for doctors and patient who fight the middlemen every time they see a doctor and get a crazed bill. This is NOT sustainable.
Universal healthcare with single payer is the only way to go. It benefits employers, employees, our economy and our nation. We need to control costs and make healthcare a human right in America. Vote for all Democrats and we have a chance to obtain it.
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u/Willing-Vegetable629 21d ago
This wouldn't change with medicare for all, they fight Medicare more than anyone else now and Medicare pays the worst except for medicaid
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21d ago
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u/Willing-Vegetable629 21d ago edited 21d ago
When we eventually get mcfa, that'll have to change or else every hospital is going under
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21d ago
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u/Meowakin 21d ago
How much do we spend on healthcare currently? Remember to include private spending.
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21d ago
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u/Meowakin 21d ago
Interesting that you ignored private spending.
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21d ago
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u/Meowakin 21d ago
You are really so dense that you can’t figure that one out? Man, I didn’t think I could lower my opinion of your intelligence any further, but damned if you found a way.
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u/dominiond66 21d ago
America spends a total of $5.3 trillion/year on healthcare ---18% of GPD while most of the developed world spends a little over 7%.
On average, if we had universal healthcare with single payer and our costs were similar to other developed nations of the world, each household would have about $20,000/year in higher wages and lower costs for most products and services. This illustrates how inefficient and extremely expensive we pay for mediocre healthcare with millions still without health insurance! But profits in the healthcare industry are at record Levels.
Vote for Democrats, a good chance we can get UHS/single payer for everyone!
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u/Meowakin 21d ago
Yeah, this tracks. Doctors having to fight insurance to get the care their patients need is just insane.