Invasive Insurance
Here is the first line of the WSJ article:
Insurers have a message for America: Let us monitor your every move or we might take away your coverage.
Want some more?
Insurers are more likely to renew coverage, however, if a patient adopts sometimes-invasive technology.
In the past, some employers were concerned about cameras and other monitoring devices because they had the feel of “Big Brother watching” but as premiums rise, companies are getting over the issue.
I only changed a few of the words here to make a point and a prediction. Here are the real sentences:
- Insurers have a message for America’s truckers: Let us monitor your every move or we might take away your coverage.
- Insurers are more likely to renew coverage, however, if a customer adopts sometimes-invasive technology.
- In the past, some employers were concerned about cameras and other monitoring devices because they had the feel of “Big Brother watching,” said Chad McGee, another Pritchard principal. But as premiums rise, companies are getting over the issue, he said.
I did this not to make “fake” news but to show where insurance is going. This is for the trucking industry but you can easily see how it could be adapted into the health insurance industry. The more we let them be involved the more they control us. We need to be vigilant that this NOT be allowed to move in this direction.
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Which leads us to the main point. What the hell good is insurance if you can’t use it?
Because that’s the bottom line, they want to deny care for patients, and payment for doctors.
This is a very real threat. Physicians have already been turned into a commodity, as large patient groups are now traded around like raw materials. You don’t have to be a conspiracy nut to recognize that mandatory invasive health technology dovetails beautifully with the bipartisan dream of population control through health “care.” Not sure where the vigilance will reside, but we can bet the AMA, AAFP, ACP, and all the other furrowed brow groups of the professionally concerned will fold like cheap suits and adopt this crap for “our patients.” Wouldn’t it be great if reimbursement was increasingly tied not only to quality goals, but in how progress toward those goals was continuously monitored (kinda like continuous improvement)?
Agreed ????
Quality metrics as defined by the powers that be are, in my opinion, just another way to not pay for care.
The only quality metrics worth anything is the one defined by the patient. If all the insurance and government “quality metrics “ are met and the patient is still sick and/or financially destitute, then what have we accomplished?
Hmmm, let’s see…how about BCBSGA leaving it to beneficiaries, and I use the term loosely, to decide whether or not to utilize the ER, then deciding post visit whether or not they will pay based on the diagnosis, not the symptoms.
This violates the “prudent layperson “ rule that protects patients from financial harm when a potentially serious illness turns out to be one that could have been treated at a lower level of care. See https://healthpayerintelligence.com/news/bcbs-georgia-plan-to-charge-for-unnecessary-er-visits-draws-ire