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ceejayozyesterday at 11:02 PM1 replyview on HN

The insurers are buying the practices so they can eat at both sides of the trough.

(And the independent practicioners are having to use a significant portion of the money they take in to… fight the insurers!)


Replies

tptacekyesterday at 11:07 PM

What difference is that supposed to make? The money is still going into the pockets of practitioners. And: no, the claim you're making here about practitioners fighting insurers: closer to the opposite thing is true.

The idea that the problem with our system is health insurers is just slopulism. We have grave problems with our system! But they start with the providers, where the majority of all the funding in our system goes, not to the scapegoats they've stoop up in our insurers. The distinction is vitally important, because the most popular answer to this problem is to extend Medicare to everybody, and Medicare is just as victimized by this as everything else is!

We pay doctors too much, and we artificially restrict the supply of practitioners. Those doctors routinely overprescribe. Every other problem in the system is marginal.

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