Since the Christmas season is quickly approaching I thought I'd put up a holiday "wish list" of what I would like President Trump to fix when he resumes office.
I encourage everyone to add to it. Hopefully someone in the administration will see it. We all have things we would like to happen and perhaps we have ideas that haven't been considered yet.
My wish is for President Trump to do something about the insurance industry. My husband is a retired physician -- so he no longer has a reason to want a change in this area other than he felt for many years that these people interferred with his patient care.
The AMA advises the government but all of those doctors are academics and don't actually see patients on a regular basis. They regulate how long they think a patient should be hospitalized after surgery. More often than not the actual practicing doctors are pressured to push sick people out of the hospital because the days allotted by the insurance companies (as advised by the academics are too short).
President Trump needs to get rid of this nonsense of letting academics make decisions. He needs to take consultations on these issues from doctors who actually take care of people. It's a different ballgame when you actually have sick people to care for.
Not only that but the fees that the insurance companies charge for malpractice insurance are astronomical. A doctor has to work several months just to meet the overhead of the cost of insurance. That's part of the reason everything costs so much. Nurses pay malpractice insurance too. So does every health care provider and each hospital. That's a lot of money being generated having absolutely nothing to do with curing anyone but it is reflected in the patient's final bill.
I won't even go into tort reform which should have happened long ago. I wholeheartedly believe that incompetent doctors should be sued. But its become an ambulance chasing circus where they try to grab as many personnel in a net even if they had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual incident. This is the problem. This is what drives up patient costs.
Another unrelated issue -- did you know autistic people (severe end of the spectrum) can't get life insurance? I wonder how many other severely disabled people are denied life insurance too. I tell you those insurance companies need to be put under a microscope ASAP.
My husband wasn't just a good doc. He was a great doc. I could show you letter upon letter from grateful people thanking him for saving their lives. People actually cried in the office when he informed them he was retiring. They begged him to stay but he was getting older and it was time for him to leave.
i often tell him that he should write President Trump and tell him what life is really like in the trenches of the medical profession. So that the President will know what people really need. But he just laughs and tells me that the AMA is all political and they're all academics. Nobody ever listens to the real docs.
Anyhow that is my wish. That President Trump goes after those pirates in the insurance industry and gets "real docs" to fix the medical system in our country.
My Mom used to do utilization review. The person between the doctors and the insurance companies. She was an emergency room nurse before that. She would decide the length of stay.
What is needed is a strong knowledgeable person in that roll in every hospital. Like my Mom was. She didn’t take crap from either side.