Dr. Wes: If lawyers billed like doctors.
Labels: healthcare
posted by Helen at 10:45 AM
Monday, October 05, 2009
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7 Comments:
I try not to belittle either group of professionals having found over a long lifetime that I get screwed by both groups, whose rackets are protected by what may be termed guilds (AMA, AB A), a fancy word for unions. I have used lawyers less frequently than doctors but also realize that a lawyer out to screw me may be countered by my hired gun out to screw him...I am the one that does get laid in the exchange, it seems, but then we do need these professionals, and this is the price to be paid. They know it and so do it.
fred,
The AMA is simply a trade group, it is not like the bar in that you can practice medicine without joining the AMA. Substitute the board of licensing and your sentence is fine.
I think that this was a fairly insightful piece, pointing to the fact that we really need to get insurance out of our day-to-day medical needs. Our routine medical care should all be paid for out of pocket, so that insurance can be truly to protect against catastrophe and nothing else. This would vastly reduce the size of the insurance industry and the paper work that goes with it. I realize that this is not likely to happen, but it is what needs to happen.
What we have instead, and what everyone is accustomed to having, is some sort of communally paid health program, where whatever you need is going to be borne by the community at large. This is not insurance at all, but rather simply shared expenses. We could do the same thing with food if we all just agreed to put in a certain amount every week, and everyone was allowed to take whatever they wanted from the grocery store. Most of us would not like paying for the waygu steaks that someone else eats (do you know anyone who eats those?). Traditionally, as Americans, we have chosen to make our own choices and pay our own way on everything else; we should do the same on health care.
Dr. D brings up something I've been saying for a long time - the reason health insurance is so expensive is that its coverage is too broad. Too many people seem to believe that health insurance should cover just about every imaginable medical expense. Imagine how expensive car insurance would be if it covered fill-ups, oil changes, routine maintenance, etc.
Second, "health care reform" is a misnomer. Health care consists of the services we receive when we go to medical providers. There isn't much in any of the existing legislation that actually reforms health care. Instead, the legislation primarily covers health insurance reform. To the extent that government dictates what procedures will or won't be covered, that's the limit of "health care reform." The rest is arguing about how to pay for it.
If lawyers billed like doctors, six months after your case was settled, you'd get bills from the shipping company, any couriers used, a copy shop, the building the law firm used, etc... with no idea whether they really applied to you or not.
people have no idea how big, and how old the insurance business is.
lloyds of london was founded on insuring sailing vessels in elizabethan england.
the growth of insurance has always been exponential, as in the growth of computing power, the inverse size of transistor size and internet connectivity.
moores law says that chip speed will double around every 18 months....since the fifties.
alistair`s law says that pretty soon bureaucracy will expand to the size of the known universe and will consume the mass/energy of all known molecular transactions.
this process will be complete in about five years, but before that we will have to be licenced and certified and insured just to be able to access a city sidewalk.
and wear a helmet.
i could point to clear examples of this happening now in my own town...and yours, but i would be called alarmist and exaggerating.
but you watch.
the bureaucrats have plans.
and policies.
and by-laws.
and studies.
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