Cutting out the insurer

While I am not a fan of the AMA in its current structure, I do think that the idea of eliminating Big Insurance is something whose time has come many years ago, but now AMA is noticing.  It is certainly long overdue.

This has been around in some parts of the country for a dozen or more years.  Doctors and patients like it.

For those who don't get it or refuse to consider it, thrid party billing is more damaging to health care than tort reform: it is the root problem.

By Doug Trapp, amednews staff. Aug. 1, 2011.

A small but enthusiastic minority of primary care physicians believe they have found a practice model that can save money, improve patients' long-term health and drastically reduce administrative hassles: direct primary care.

Direct primary care practices are an offshoot of the retainer care model, which provides unlimited or less-restricted access to physicians for a set fee. Under direct primary care, patients pay a monthly fee -- sometimes less than $100 -- for unlimited access to a range of primary care services, possibly as complex as minor surgeries and x-rays. Patients at these practices are encouraged to have basic health insurance to pay for specialist and hospital care, otherwise uninsured patients pay out of pocket for care outside the practice.  read more

Selection from Natural Health News

http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2011/03/insurance-fraud-big-phrma.html

http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2007/10/doctors-checking-out-early.html

http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2008/11/doctors-to-quit.html

US Health Care: Why We Rank Low

I have yet to see the AMA do anything that has stopped or changed these obstructions.

What's wrong with U.S. healthcare

NEW YORK, March 8 (UPI) -- U.S. healthcare is determined by a myriad of large and powerful interconnected organizations that have dictated the "rules of the game," researchers said. 

Study authors Salinder Supri of Anderung Consulting in New York and Karen Malone of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, characterize the U.S. institution of medicine as not as a single, comprehensive and cohesive system of healthcare, but instead, a myriad of powerful organizations. 

The researchers said these powerful organizations have determined the rules of the game:

-- Insurance companies have set the rule "restrict choice and coverage" by using an elaborate system of co-payments and deductibles, exclusion clauses and loopholes.

-- HMOs have set the rule "manage care" to limit the number of treatments patients receive, the days spent in a hospital and their choice of provider. 

-- The pharmaceutical industry has set the rule "charge as much as we want, because insurance will pay," resulting in prescription drug prices nearly 60 percent higher than in Canada and patients being prescribed sometimes "unnecessary, often useless and even potentially dangerous drugs."

-- Corporate hospital chains have set the rule "test (patients) as much as we want because insurance will pay," even when excessive or unnecessary.

"The sum of the 'rules of the game' devised by these organizations has resulted in a fragmented, haphazard and broken system of healthcare," the authors said. 

The article is published in The American Journal of Medicine.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/03/08/Whats-wrong-with-US-healthcare/UPI-14881299589178/print/#ixzz1G3HKOCPm

Medical News: Florida Medical Association Votes 'No Confidence' in AMA

Medical News: Florida Medical Association Votes 'No Confidence' in AMA - in Washington-Watch, Reform from MedPage Today