Doctors in the House

Patients over the years (and even still today) ask me why I don’t go into private practice.  They don’t understand that it is almost impossible to do it.   Other than concierge care, which is my dream, there are very few doctors who have been successful working with insurance companies.  How sad is that?  Even sadder is an article in the WSJ entitled Humana Brings Doctors In-House.

Humana is accelerating its move into directly providing health care, with new deals and planned investments that are expected to expand the number of physicians under its umbrella to more than 2,600. The insurer said Monday it is spending around $500 million in cash—or $850 million including debt—to acquire Metropolitan Health Networks, a Boca Raton, Fla., company that operates health-care-provider networks serving people on Medicare, Medicaid and other plans.

To summarize, we are turning into the Borg:

The Borg are a collection of alien species that have turned into cybernetic organisms functioning as drones of the collective or the hive. A pseudo-race, dwelling in the Star Trek universe, the Borg take other species by force into the collective and connect them to “the hive mind”; the act is called assimilation and entails violence, abductions, and injections of cybernetic implants. The Borg’s ultimate goal is “achieving perfection”.

I am asking that some reader out there comment by taking the Borg paragraph above and change it/tweak it by putting the word physician in there and make it reflect what is happening in healthcare.  Have fun!