Universal Coverage Up Close
Most people in health policy are obsessed with Insurance coverage, but almost indifferent to whether that means anyone gets more care. Expect to see a lot more of this in the next few years:
Willie McGee says he waited six hours at the clinic, only to be scheduled to see a doctor for another day. Tanya Carrillo says she was sent by a hospital for follow up care, and was booked for an appointment more than three months out. Gledel Beacham picks up medication at the clinic, but says it’s easier to see a doctor elsewhere.
“Here, it’s like a circus,” he says about the only county-run health clinic in Sacramento…
“People are trying to…access services and they’re being told they have to wait months for specialty care or months for just a follow-up appointment for chronic conditions,” says [Stacey Wittorff, an attorney at Legal Services of Northern California].
Source: KHN.
“‘Instead of running big, public health clinics, we contract with…community-based organizations with a long history of providing direct clinical care’ says Briscoe. Since the LIHP was implemented in Alameda, the county has been able to increase access to and decrease wait times for specialty care”
It looks like spending more money on healthcare for the low income population results in positive outcomes.
There’s a huge conflation of coverage with care. That’s a really scary thing — too often individuals get away with discussing them as though they’re one in the same.
It’s very important for the NCPA to raise these issues.
It’s ridiculous to believe that a huge bureaucratic entity can run personal and efficient healthcare.
Things like this happen when a state closes six hospitals and only depends on a hospital to serve the community.
+1 Jackson
This is a classic example what what’s wrong with our health care system. No, I don’t mean everyone needs care that’s free at the point of service — all paid for by taxpayers (that has its own problems). This is a classic example that is ideal to explain principles of microeconomics.
1) The medical profession is granted an exclusive license to practice medicine, which creates a professional cartel whose job it is to create barriers to entry that restrict supply and inhibit competition. This is done under the pretext to ensure quality — including quality for people who might otherwise turn to substandard practitioners for medical care to save costs.
2) A large segment of the population cannot afford (or chooses not to afford) medical care. These are cared for through the safety net system. Taxpayers are unwilling to commit sufficient resources. Thus, poor people get shoved into a substandard, safety net system where care is rationed by waiting.
Whether you have insurance coverage or not, you are very likely to struggle getting care and seeing a physician. What’s the point of having any coverage in the first place then? This is what happens when the government hurts the economy and the health care system to the point that hospitals are forced to close down and physicians are forced to treat less patients. This situation is affecting the access to care to the point that people are dying just waiting for their “appointment” day to arrive. Still, the man that brought us here was re-elected, why? Still trying to figurte that one out.
our lawmakers need to focus more on the quality of care people receive
+2 Jackson
I still say you get what you pay for and we will end up seeing different tiers of clinics/care.
Insurance means nothing if we don’t have the doctors to treat people.
The same thing happens in the British National Service at times. It happens in the American VA system too.
Government-run clinics often do not have enough money in their budget to hire enough specialists.
So to use a British saying, “You pay not to wait, or you wait not to pay.”
I have no easy solutions, but let me offer this observation:
An American recipient of Medicaid who gets into a public clinic or ER for free is probably receiving better health care than 95% of the human race in the last 2000 years.
We in America are so used to getting the best care money can buy, we tend to use it as the standard for human rights.
I agree with Leah Ferguson, Bob Hertz, and Jackson.