I'll just apologize right up front for returning to the subject of health-care insurance. It is, however, the subject that is at the forefront of my mind this morning.
Do we think much about it? I never gave health-care insurance much thought for years because I was covered, and covered well, as a dependent of another person. It was a given, much like breathing in and breathing out. Aside from following or chasing paperwork, keeping track of deductibles for multiple individuals, and attempting to decipher the ubiquitous EOBs (explanation of benefits......now there is an oxymoron.), health insurance was, well, just there. I never fully understood the plight of the un-insured, the under-insured or the self-insured until the fairly recent past. Did I feel that health insurance was an entitlement? I don't think so but I certainly did look at it as a 'given'. Later, as I was the lead negotiator in labor-contract talks, I came to understand the huge benefit that employer-paid health insurance was. It is a largely hidden benefit that relatively few employees, at the time, were cognizant of the monetary value of. It is really only in the recent historical past that employers have had to pass along costs associated with the coverage and employees have become more educated in what the cost-associated benefits amount to.
Then insurance-life changed dramatically when I left my professional field and had to seek out self-insurance.
Where am I going with this? Client-provider confidentiality.
In the legal field, client-lawyer confidentiality is sacred. You tell your lawyer and 'it' stays there, period. In the medical field there is the nebulous third party....the insurance company. A patient confides in a physician, the physician records the confidence in the patient's record, but the confidence doesn't stay there, does it? The insurance company knows all and sees all. Confidentiality between doctor and patient is non-existent....a pipe dream......and it is this breach of confidentiality that remains a virus in the health-care insurance industry. A visit to the doctor for a simple earache can result in denial of coverage for any ear-related issues for the rest of your life. The pre-existing condition purgatory is alive and well, as any self-insured person can attest to. As long as the doctor-patient confidentiality is breached each time a patient confides in a doctor, patients will need to continue to be less than open with physicians.
This is progressive health care?
Ancora imparo
