You foks picked up on the first quote from Reinhardt that I posted, but
you haven't said anything about the second one.
How does Reinhardt put a value on the time people spend on the phone
with the clerks at the HMO begging and pleading for payment? Is it
efficient, in his terms that the HMO bullying (his word) costs real hours
on the phone, never mind the psychological cost he mentions.
And, separately, how does he measure the dollar value of lives lost,
and time lost, because people DIDN'T go to the ER when face with his
"psychological co-payment"?
Gene Coyle
Eugene Coyle wrote:
> Summers redux? Here's a quote from Uwe Reinhardt, Princeton, a leading
> health-care economist:
>
> A Wall St. Journal article on Tuesday, July 20th reports that many
> managed care patients have nowhere to go for after-hours care except
> emergency rooms. That has the drawbacks of long waits, hours in some
> cases, and much higher patient payments. The HMOs sometimes refuse to
> pay at all, so the patients are billed hundreds of dollars for what
> would have been routine coverage during business hours.
>
> The Journal reports:
>
> Uwe Reinhardt, a health-care economist at Princeton University,
> defends HMOs practice of sending people to the E. R. after-hours,
> arguing it is more efficient than building a new system.
>
> The quote: "Efficiency very often doesn't please consumers," he
> says. He also says that by challenging coverage in some situations,
> HMOs make people think twice about going to the E. R. "By threatening
> not to pay for it, you create what I call a 'psychological co-payment.
> The jawboning and bullying reduces the use."
