Human Medicine Could Learn a Few Tricks From Veterinarians
1st August 2012
For one thing, the government isn’t trying to run everything.
My wife, a pediatrician, doesn’t post price lists. They’re irrelevant, since very few of her patients pay their own bills. Even regular, predictable expenses are handled by insurance companies, or by government programs, or by convoluted combinations of the two. She loves kids and respects parents and discusses care with them. But many of the important decisions are made elsewhere. There’s little point in going in-depth about possible medications with a Medicaid patient when you’re going to end up playing whack-a-mole with the AHCCCS Formulary — the ever-morphing list of medicines that Arizona’s implementation of Medicaid has decided to pay for this time around.
The idea of removing patients as responsible parties was to remove money from the decision-making process — to give us the illusion that care is free, and that treatment will be provided with no need for us to fret over the bills. It’s not free of course. We’ve just bought the illusion, and transferred the cost-benefit analyses to somebody else. We still get some choices, but unless we’re among the few who pay out of pocket, they’ve been winnowed and pre-approved ahead of time.
August 3rd, 2012 at 23:24
**There, not only was I presented with an estimate of the likely low and high costs associated with his care, but the prices of common procedures and vaccines were posted on the wall in every room.**
As a vet, I can attest to the honing of communication skills you have to develop to help a lay person understand the benefits and risks of one treatment protocol over another. The human medical field could use some honing.
I hear my clients often say, “I spend more on my pet’s health than I do on my own.” While that may be true I’m certain they are clueless as to what amount gets spent on their health.