The Case for Health Care Reform Common Sense

I'm not going to get into the whole public option vs. free market argument here (and for the record I think Obama should have gone straight to single payer using the French/Japanese model and skipped the watered down, arguably less impactful public option but that's another post altogether.) 

But back to that fun little topic of reforming health care and more importantly the way it's practiced in a smallish, but not exactly rural community in the southwest. Today I called my family practitioners office to set up appointments for the kids to get "established" as patients. They had previously been seen at a pediatric practice but the waits are typically two to three hours long (even for prescheduled wellness visits that must be made months in advance) and the last time I called for a sick visit I was told that they wouldn't be able to get the kids in for several days. Not exactly the ideal situation so I figured it was time to move on. 

Anyways I start the conversation with the scheduling receptionist by explaining that I want to get the kids established as patients (because if they're not "established"  and they get sick the wait time to be seen is as ridiculous as two weeks) and that my daughter is coming up on her four year wellness visit so can we just schedule her for that (which with my insurance means no copay) and I'll bring boys to the same appointment pay the office copay for their visits so that it will count when in actuality they won't need anything done to them as they're up to date on wellness visits.  Simple enough, right?

The scheduling clerk immediately balks at my plan and informs me that even though she understands that the boys won't actually need to have anything done I will have to bring my daughter in for her wellness visit at 10am, Alex in at 1pm and Max in at 2pm because that's the way the scheduling blocks for new patients are set up.

Maintaining my calm, I reiterate to her that A)The boys aren't sick, don't need a wellness visit and wouldn't even need to see an actual doctor but just need to be considered established so blocking out a sixty minute window of time for each of them seems a little excessive B) I'm willing to pay the copay for it to "count" as an establishing visit and will even keep them sitting in the lobby if having them in the room during Sophia's wellness visit is a problem C)I am trying to minimize the amount of time that I expose three small children to a germ covered, virus polluted waiting room so that I won't need to bring them all in again in a few days for a real illness D) the hours between 1pm to about 4pm are prime naptime in our home and there is NO WAY I'm going to drag three healthy children to the Dr's office during those hours so they can wait around to have nothing done to them!!! 

Understanding my hesitation she offers me three individual hour long visits on three separate days... all  of them between the hours of 1 to 4pm. 

So best case scenario is I get to take my three healthy children in for three separate faux office visits on three separate days so that the doctor's office can bill my insurance company for no less than $350 a visit and THEN we'll be established should they ever really need to see the doctor. 

That makes perfect sense!

And critics of health care reform argue that inefficiencies in the current system will be hashed out by the market. 

Right.

I guess they've never had the privilege of establishing themselves as patients.