# "What's wrong with health care in America?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 10, 2000, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-health-care-in-america/44874 "2000-12-10T11:15:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Major\_Feelgud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3be4f8/32.png) [@Major\_Feelgud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Major_Feelgud)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2000, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-health-care-in-america/44874/21 "2000-12-12T03:58:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by edwino \* > \*\*So would CT for concussions. > \*\* I’ve got another rant. Our local hospital, which is renowned for emergency care, CT’s every MVA who comes in who says “I think I was unconscious for a moment”. As a result of that and the myriad of tests they perform on almost everyone, MVAs seldom leave without a $10,000 bill. ---
**Author:** ![Major\_Feelgud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3be4f8/32.png) [@Major\_Feelgud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Major_Feelgud)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2000, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-health-care-in-america/44874/22 "2000-12-12T04:01:16Z")
aynrandlover: Sorry to hijack my own post, but what’s the deal with anyrand? I know there’s an aynrand following, but don’t know anything about it. ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2000, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-health-care-in-america/44874/23 "2000-12-12T17:31:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Major Feelgud \* > \*\*Yeah, I’m a retired doc, and I’ve seen a lot of abuses from all sides, patients, docs, insurance cos. I’ve read a few SDMB topics that touched on health care and I idylly wondered about it, that’s why I started this topic. > > For starters, if insurance wasn’t that hard or complex to collect from, your job would be history (pardon the pun) and I mean that in a good way. That would be less overhead, a lot less. I know practices with 2-3 people who do billing full time. What for? $80K+/year just to mail in forms? Your own existence contradicts your statement. If insurance was so easy to deal with, why do you need to have to go to college for it? Why need the continuing ed? Why need the latest in coding and insurance requirments? LOL. \*\* Because the gummint also uses this information to compile statistics. What I said is not as contradictory as it seems. Insurance is easy for me because I do it for a living, and because I make contacts in my day-to-day work that I can work with and who I know will take care of the problem claims. Most people don’t have that advantage. Health care is changing. Physicians that would practice alone or with a partner in the past (even as recently as 10 to 15 years ago) can no longer afford to compete that way, at least in larger cities. And as insurance companies are tightening the belt in terms of reimbursement, more physicians are forced to take on more patients just to stay even. So, in that environment, a 30k+ a year office nurse (who can see patients herself for routine BP checks and injections, thereby adding to your billables) becomes a necessity, as do billing people at 25k+ a year. As a billing/coding specialist, I know how to bill for everything you do as a physician. You may think of an office visit for a patient as just an office visit, but if you do a Pap smear on a woman, that’s more money. If you give an injection, or a pill, that’s more money. If you do a spirometry or an EKG, that’s more money. If you fill out a form so a kid can play football or go to camp, that’s money. It’s all in how you bill for it. That’s what I know how to do. And when you’re seeing upwards of fifteen to twenty patients a day, you need all the help you can get. Robin [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-health-care-in-america/44874.md?page=1)