Treated like a dog

**Went with my daughter to a veterinary care facility in the Charleston area to pick up my her old, sick dog. Spent about half hour there but came away wondering why the health care facilities I deal with aren't as good. Not that they're horrific. No, they are quite organized, modern looking and well staffed. In my system the docs, nurses and other providers have access to all my medical information. And I have access via email to docs and nurses.

So what's my complaint? I don't feel as cared about as clients of that animal care facility. Maybe it's because of the enormous bureaucratic load imposed on health care providers by insurance companies. I always get the impression that I'm taking up a doctor's time, rather than giving him or her the opportunity to give me attention. I read a survey a few years ago that the average amount of time between when a patient starting to talk and a doctor interrupting is EIGHTEEN SECONDS. I have some who take less and some who take more time. But it's always UNDER A MINUTE.

Knowing this I've taken advantage of my health care system's email access and can write up a thorough description of the issue I'm coming to discuss with the Doc. Did this last week about the screwups involved with dealing with my frozen shoulder. This cut the in-person discussion down to about one minute and it started with an apology from the doc about the way things were handled, and then an agreement with me about the next steps to take in treatment.

I wonder how many older patients would have availed themselves of this tactic. I suspect many or maybe even most people just show up, mumble a few things, get talked to for a few minutes and then get an Rx. I time every one of my visits and the average is about 12 minutes per visit. Maybe that's enough for most people. It certainly is enough when I provide the doc a backgrounder on the issue in advance. Otherwise, I think it's too short, way too short, if it's up to me to provide the doctor with what I feel are the relevant circumstances and facts about the issue. I need time to describe things, to suggest things, to wonder about things. And time is what they get paid for. Not empathy.

But to get back to my main impetus for writing this: the vet people seemed to be genuinely thoughtful and empathetic about the patients entrusted to them. Maybe because they were being paid directly instead of by insurance. In any case, I wish I could be treated more like a dog than as a time sink for an insurance company.

Group vs. Individual Health Insurance

A relative who works in the health insurance industry confirms that people in a group plan are not subject to the same vulnerabilities as those with individual policies. This means that the health insurance debate is not only about the 46 million Americans who have no health insurance at all, but also those who do have individual policies and therefore can be dropped, excluded for pre-existing conditions or have their rates hiked to the skies. So, granted that most people are covered by group plans, that sill leaves a significant portion of the population at great risk for dying or being bankrupted by a health problem.

That's why it's really a moral issue. Should anyone be allowed to die or be financially devastated just because they get sick? America is the only country in the world where this can happen. Even those of us who are covered by group plans, including Medicare and Medicaid, should not rest easy. We have a moral responsibility to care for the population as a whole. That's the idea behind insurance - those who don't need it are paying for those who do need it.

We have an outrageously costly military because it's deemed important that we protect everybody from any possible enemy. We may not need it at any given moment but we pay for it anyway - just in case. Disease and injury are universal and present enemies. We need to design - re-design - our systems to extend that care to everyone. And we could probably pay for it by diverting some of our tax money away from the military - a few planes ships or missiles should do it - in addition to eliminating waste.