This Provisional final rule This will prohibit accidental billing by the media as one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of American healthcare. To be sure, the balance billing is obviously unfair, so that few parties support the proposed law, which can indeed protect consumers from such insidious practices. But this is not the real answer to repairing a healthcare system that exploits customers.
Unexpected medical bills are just a symptom of a potential problem-a reward system that rewards each patient for maximizing income, coupled with a shocking lack of accountability.This is how we end a harmful healthcare system Quarter Of Medicare hospitalized patients due to error or negligence, and how do we get Hospital system prosecution Thousands of former patients pay for their inability to pay their bills—usually bills they never anticipated because they were never informed of their expenses in advance.This is why Two thirds Of those who filed for bankruptcy protection said that medical expenses are a key factor in their financial problems.
After more than a decade of unimpeded integration, most hospitals are units of multi-billion-dollar corporations, employing more than half of the country’s doctors—no longer their former community resource. As more and more corporatization, hospitals purchase doctor practice as assets and force these clinicians to generate appropriate return on investment. Maximizing income—not an outcome that is important to patients or careful use of resources—is the name of the game. Many doctors honor their practices to become part of this new medical care, and sometimes they are forced to give up their moral sensitivity.
The reason why some clinicians can rationalize many violations of the corporatized health care service system is that it can bring huge returns and reduce the burden of running their own practices. Another reason is that neither they nor their company bosses need to care too much about whether they have actually delivered the results they promised to patients. They must strike a balance between the pressure of the company to “become a team member” and the prudent clinical practice they know. Indeed, the current system makes this difficult because it pays for every procedure, service, test, or consultation they provide while caring for patients—the more they do, the more they make. If their company boss thinks it’s okay to use unexpected bills, well, so be it. This is no longer their problem. No one can catch up with them.
This is why we have unexpected bills and all the other ills of our current healthcare system-because there is no responsibility for managing costs, quality, or even satisfying patients. Until medical insurance and commercial insurance companies link the reimbursements they pay to suppliers with things that are important to us as consumers and citizens, we will continue to have a dysfunctional system that complies with shocking practices , Such as accidental billing, and continue to spend time on such band-aid temporary final rules, rather than solving the real problem.
Photo: lbodvar, Getty Images
