Herrrrrrrrrrrrrre's EDITING!

Sick-O-Crap!

So I just got done watching "Sicko". The thing about it is that I find myself telling my patients/family/friends... whomever, that the reason that they are having such a hard time with their insurance company is fairly simple. There is a guy who works for their insurance company who's pay is directionally proportional to how much money he denies going to you. I met this guy (actually saw him in the movie, and more accurately ONE of these guys) just now. He apparently is a lapsed adjuster now speaking out against his former profession. What a smart, articulate, perceptive and "out of the box thinking" individual he was. He is the absolutely last person you want trying to find a loop-hole in your insurance coverage in order to justify denying payment for your kid's heart surgery. I used to think they saw us as just numbers. Now I know it is even worse. They see us as dollar signs. "Had a case of the coughs before we insured you?...cha ching...No treatment for your Pneumonia, It is a pre-existing condition" (this happened to my wife).
Today I hated my job for 10 minutes. The five minutes it took me to tell a patient we could not continue his therapy because his insurance would not reimburse for problems keeping him from working and the five minutes it took to write it up. I have had to stay after work for 2-3 hours to finish getting paperwork done, treated patients who literally questioned every decision and intervention related to their care and I have worked with therapists who would correct me in front of my patients (unjustly but the damage was done the patent's eyes); but that 10 minutes was the first 10 I actually HATED being a physical therapist. By the way, the patent's tiny little known insurance company is an obscure outfit known as Medicare.