New toolkit helps doctors address patients’ financial needs – a role doctors say they feel thrust into amid worsening crisis
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20250127154219/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/medical-debt-tool-kit-doctors
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I hate having to ask, but a lot of doctors will be, “you need x y z” and get frustrated when I’m just “I’ll do all of it…if my insurance covers it.” I am on the public plan. I have no money. I had one very condescendingly say my health is more important than money and just leave when I asked where I’m to get the money from when I had no job and had no way of doing debt.
I’m lucky my public plan is pretty good. But there are things it will not cover. Dental is a nightmare. Preventative is a nightmare. Surprisingly physical therapy is a go? Finding specialists is a nightmare because the phone line is just. They know nothing.
Im my experience they can mess up the claims and not seem willing to correct them or they send out to another place that does it and you add even more complexity. To be fair its likely the insurers make the claim process complicated in the hopes of mess ups they can then deny. In the end though the patient has no access to the software or processes they use and the doctors office has to correct these things.
Poor doctors are upset that they took an oath to help people
They’re upset they have to spend time fighting insurance companies cause every hour they spend doing that is one less hour they get to spend actually helping people
Which doctor’s are your referring to. Most doctors are able to pick & choose what insurance they take or ask for payment in advance. ER & other doctors don’t even have to deal with billing directly as it is a role the hospital admin takes on.
I think a big problem arises when a doctor says a particular medicine or procedure is medically necessary, but the insurance company disagrees and tries to bullshit their way out of covering it. Doctors shouldn’t be having to spend so much time arguing against these situations, but many of them feel like they have no choice, because if insurance doesn’t cover it, the patient just isn’t going to get the medication.
That is literally the doctor’s job though. Doctors can band together to get someone like Bernie Sanders elected if they want change. But they keep supporting corporate Democrats primally, or some even support Trump.
Doctors can’t unionize. And even if they could, they’re not numerous enough to swing elections, even if you could get them all to agree, which I doubt.
More like: Overworked, under staffed doctors have to add more to their work load because the insurance industry is aggressively taking advantage of the doctor’s patients.
I’m no greek scholar, but I don’t believe navigating a system of middle-man bean counters was what they had in mind.
Most doctors can pick & choose what insurance they take. Its the hospital administrators’ job to deal with billing, you know the form they ask you to sign once you’re all drugged up.
They’re upset that they’re being hamstrung by profitseeking algorithms and wage-slaves.
