Health Magazine advocates lying and making up symptoms to obtain the desired tests:
To get tested, talk up your symptoms.
Your insurer doesn’t want to pay for a colonoscopy if it’s not necessary. But if your best friend is diagnosed with colon cancer and you want the $675 test to put your mind at ease, here’s how to get one covered: Mention to your doctor that you’ve had some blood in your stool and a lot of gas lately””or simply that your bowel habits have changed. Your plan has to pay for the test if you have gastro complaints, health experts say.
Idiocy. (via a reader tip)
Related posts:
- Fecal DNA tests
- Why does American medicine do so many tests?
- Selling genetic tests directly to the consumer
- My take: Patient tips, questioning tests
- How companies make money from unnecessary screening tests
- Tips for convincing your doctor to order more tests for you
- Demand a CT scan
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{ 13 comments }
Health Magazine is deliberately encouraging insurance fraud.
And we wonder why health care costs so much in the US. If they are publishing it, people are already doing it.
Wow. That is scary. I think what the “health experts” probably meant was that your plan pays for the test provided that you actually have those things going on, not just verbally complaining about a tummy ache.
No, they’re advocating lying. They do not say, “if you are worried about the blood in your stool…” they say, “You are worried because a friend had colon cancer and you want to put your mind at ease, say you have a little blood in your stool…”
Lying and fraud.
If they have my health plan they’ll get a little card with instructions to collect and smear samples on it.
I think far better to encourage folks to talk with their Dr. about their personal risk, and lifestyle changes they can make.
If you have a family history like Tony Snow then fudging a bit to get a screening is probably understandable.
Wow. That is basically what Katrina Firlik, MD said in her book Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, which I finished reading recently. But I am pretty sure she was being sarcastic. It sounds like a major misquote of her.
I hate sites that don’t let you go back to where you were — this one wanted registration (I didn’t stay long enough to find out if you had to pay) but trying to go back to Kevin MD was not possible. How do some sites do this?
Then send the bill to Health Magazine…
Just one other reason we should do away with health insurance and government programs all together. If you want it then YOU pay for it.
Isn’t this what physicians do, but they just blame it on lawyers when they do it?
This is beyond irresponsible journalism and has moved into the realm of promoting a crime. Such duplicity also cuts at the heart of the doctor-patient relationship.
My own thought is that anyone concerned about such a piece should blog about it. Be sure to include the name of this author in your post heading for the benefit of the search engines. That’s: SUZ REDFEARN. Also include the website’s contact URL.
John
hnmm. how can i get a cardiac CT scan done and PAID for????
Patients and their doctors know that the insurers aren’t honest and will deny legitimate requests for diagnostic tests and therapeutic procedures with dishonest justifications, such as “the treatment is experimental”, or by claiming insincerely that you lied in your application by failing to mention athlete’s foot twenty years ago.
Nor should they expect the federal government to intervene on their behalf, which has disempowered consumer watchdog agencies such as the EPA, FDA, SEC, and OSHA. You can expect this kind of consumer fraud to be perpetrated by both patients and physicians.
After all, if institutionalized fraud against policy owners is going to be facilitated and condoned on behalf of the insurance industry by our government, you can expect them to take advantage of that at your expense. It is not unreasonable to assume that you will be denied timely life saving care inappropriately by an unethical eligibility specialist, and to lie to prevent that possibility.
I’m not going to commit fraud on a patient’s behalf, but not because it hurts an insurance company or is considered unethical by others. But I’m also not going to interrogate a patient on behalf of an insurer to try to distinguish the fearful from the sick.
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