Regarding Healthcare in the United States

Ever wonder why a healthcare provider only accepts some insurance companies and not others? It’s a business plan for market control; there is a certain level of collaboration between malpractice and healthcare insurers.

A large portion of malpractice lawsuits are due to either misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis. In my personal experiences, misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis is due to the doctors following the diagnostic plan laid out by the person's health insurance provider.

For example, my former primary physician dismissed my symptoms for nearly 10 years. I found a new primary physician and she immediately sent me to a specialist. The specialist wanted to do two different tests but the insurance wouldn't approve the second one. He only did the first test, told me what symptoms I had without identifying the problem, and put me on a medication that actually made my condition gradually worse for nearly a year- all because he didn’t want to fight with my insurance company. With my next specialist, she pursued the issue with my insurance provider, did both the first and second test, gave me a proper diagnosis, and got me on a medicine that actually helps (after a prior approval process with my insurance provider, once again, because the medicine was not an the approved medication list).

A close friend of mine just lost her grandmother to cancer; the oncologist said that doing a scan of her stomach (where it started) could have saved her, but the fact that her grandmother went to the doctor complaining of back pain meant that the doctor likely followed protocol laid out by insurance specific to back pain and did not investigate further. As a result, the symptoms spread with the cancer, and by the time she was diagnosed it could not be effectively treated due to how far it progressed.

One of the largest financial sectors in the country capitalizes on the domino effect of raising the cost of malpractice insurance, which causes the cost of healthcare to go up, which causes the cost of insuring the patients to go up, which causes both higher premiums and tighter sanctions on the treatments doctors can give for a specific set of symptoms thus limiting their ability to diagnose the true problem, which leads to misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis, which leads to a lawsuit, which raises the cost of malpractice insurance and starts the cycle over again. In the middle of all this, the quality of healthcare gradually falls and, as a result, people simply die.

Insurance companies should not be allowed to choose who they insure. There is no justifiable reason why they can deny insurance to a person with a pre-existing condition when the cost of treatment for a person with a delayed diagnosis and/or misdiagnosis is, on average, just as expensive to treat, especially when the delayed diagnosis or misdiagnosis is caused by the sanctions from the insurance provider in the first place.

The sanctions should be on the insurance companies; not the doctors. This cycle of greed can be a direct cause of death for those who fall victim to it, and those who do not die will lose their livelihood. Insurance companies are holding thousands of people hostage with their premiums and sanctions on doctors, and this should not be allowed to stand.

Sincerely,

Blog Foxx