The infamous Dr. Glaucomflecken’s latest TikTok is going to rile some people up. He takes on health insurance. It’s comedy, so he doesn’t address the real reality of fraud among other things. However, I think he captured how many doctors think about insurance (right or wrong).
Health insurance pic.twitter.com/CbqobWGYId
— Dr. Glaucomflecken (@DGlaucomflecken) October 7, 2021
The part about insurance companies making money off the interest they earn while they hold doctors money is interesting for me. I actually asked someone from a payer about this since I’d heard doctors talk about it before. I wanted to know if this was really their strategy. She told me that they wish they were that sophisticated. She said that the reason they probably paid the doctors on the last day was that their processes sucked and they probably couldn’t get to it until then and then the due date forced them to finally get to it. One could argue that insurance executives understand this and therefore don’t fund good processes for paying doctors I guess, but that seems like a stretch.
Lest I come across as too much of a insurance sympathizer, they should do much better with prior auths. They do have terrible and confusing processes which cause so many issues. I’d be happy if insurance disappeared from our health system except for catastrophic cases and definitely not tied to the employer. All of that said, Dr. Glaucomflecken is pretty brilliant with comedy. Plus, he captured so well why so many doctors don’t trust insurance companies.
Have a great weekend!