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What air travel would look like if it worked like health care

Kevin | Policy | February 3, 2010

No other industry would tolerate the bureaucratic inefficiencies that are allowed to persist in our health care system.

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Tagged as: Health reform

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http://www.bensfriends.org Ben Munoz

Will someone save us from this mess please?
Steven Wynn

That is a GREAT video.
Ray

Why does not the public understand this. WE don’t have the best health care sysytem, ceratinly have the most wasteful and costliest one!!!!!!!!!
Anonymous

Nice. Obama should see this.
http://www.cyberdentist.blogspot.com Dean

They left out the whole discussion of the insurance/government plan denying coverage for the “flight” because the birthdate was incorrect on the form, or the claim was “lost”. You’ll have to refile that one again sir. They also left out the provider’s side of the thing–the policy caps the reimbursement and sometimes changes the reimbursement rate, or does not raise the rates for inflation for years and prohibits them from asking for any copays, and sends the reimbursement to the “customer” so the doctor has to bill the patient who may or may not pay the bill and thus the provider becomes the bad guy for the ins. co’s cheapness, etc….
stargirl65

I am frustrated by the system too. All the EHR’s (electronic health records) are still proprietary and do NOT easily talk to one another. HIPAA restricts us from sharing information easily with each other. They restrict our communication over the internet as well. Our limited reimbursements from insurance companies make it difficult to invest in IT as it is ridiculously expensive for this specialized use. The software purchase for a single doctor office costs over $10,000 (per doctor) for a system. This does not include the hardware costs, costs for IT to get this going, annual fees, etc. I spend more per year on IT than I do on each employee. It has become one of my biggest costs.

Most medical offices are small businesses that find it hard to get these systems going. The time, training, money are difficult for a small business to absorb. Airlines are big businesses that can coordinate these systems more easily.

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