Payments > Patient Billing

discounts for hardship patients

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Mazie:

--- Quote from: PMRNC on October 25, 2011, 02:01:53 PM ---
--- Quote ---I know I will come across as harsh or cruel, and I don't mean to be that way at all, BUT..... I'm fed up to my eyeballs with people assuming that doctors all make a fortune and that they should all treat people for free.  They are a business providing a service, not a charity.  When a doctor or facility is willing to make special arrangements for you be grateful, because they don't have to! 
--- End quote ---

I COULD NOT AGREE MORE!!  And let's not forget doctors are the most heavily govt regulated professionals in the country!! They are watched while even picking their nose!

--- End quote ---

My sympathy for physicians is more limited because in the 1990s, physicians in this country danced with the devil by colluding with the insurance industry to torpedo healthcare reform. After that, not a single politician in this country dared utter the words "healthcare reform" for another 15 years and we ended up with this mess.

Once the goal of ending efforts at healthcare reform was accomplished, healthcare professionals passively allowed the insurance industry to completely take over the healthcare system in the United States. Now even people with insurance are being bankrupted or choosing to die rather than bankrupt their families. No other modern nation in the world is in this situation.

Physicians are now buried by insurance companies, but they brought it on themselves and instead of organizing and taking control over healthcare back, they dump the responsibility onto their patients. Physicians and billing professionals actually expect patients to ferry this convoluted system as if they are on the payroll as billing specialists! How is that reasonable or realistic? How can patients know all the intricacies of billing/coding when even billing specialists have trouble with it? And if they can't, how is it ethical to then stick them with huge debts and "go after them" for it?

The amount of stress and financial devastation caused to American families is staggering. When physicians are contributing to those high levels of stress, which in turn ravage families since money problems is the foremost issue that breaks up families, which in turn takes a toll on the entire nation on multiple levels, they are delivering bad healthcare.

The bottom line is, physicians have it tough but patients did not create this system. Insurance companies and healthcare professionals did. Physicians aren't going bankrupt. Their patients are.

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