Policies

A person I know has been sick for a while...the kind of sick where you have good days and bad days and can't really nail down what's wrong. Last week though, she got really bad and had to go to the Medac (critical care facility), who sent her to her doctor. Now, my friend doesn't have insurance, and had to go to the doctor several months ago as well. She has about a $1,000 bill with them, and has been paying on it faithfully every month. Well, this last visit they asked her how she was planning to pay her new $350 bill and she said that she had planned on just adding it to her existing bill. They sent her back to a little room with, I presume, a business manager-type person who told her that if comes again and can't pay the full amount, they won't treat her.

What?!?!?!?!

I'm thinking if someone is faithfully paying you back, then does it matter that they can't pay every bill up front? It really made me angry at that doctor's office. It's a medical group, so I guess that's why they have the impersonal touch, but still. You'll see people who don't pay (because Medicare pays for them) yet you won't see someone who will eventually reimburse you 100% of your bill, which I'm pretty sure Medicare doesn't do. Fortunately, I know for a fact that not every doctor is that callous.

I know everyone has differing opinions on healthcare (my current theory is that insurance screwed everything up by forcing doctors to jack up their prices so that you HAVE to have insurance) and I sure haven't figured it out, but I wish there were some way to make it less difficult.

I know that everyone out there is bound to have differing opinions on health care