I suspect my patients are tired of hearing the mantra; ‘It is not Health insurance, it is Wealth Insurance’. The topic usually comes up during any conversation regarding how eventually my practice will be paid for the services we provide. Many patients are just waking up to the fact that they personally will have to pay one way or the other for their health care. Unfortunately, they are slower to realize that there are few other contingent liabilities so completely capable of eliminating your financial foot print. I take great effort to inform my patients that your health insurance is only designed to protect your assets in case of a medical emergency. Expecting insurance to cover a routine visit to a Doctor’s office is like financing your hair cuts through a third party, whom you can be sure is making a profit. Realistically you wouldn’t expect your car insurance to pay for an oil change…unless you paid additionally for the extended warranty. As consumers we make the decision every day to seek out the greatest value in our financial interactions. As capitalists we embrace this concept employing it ruthlessly to create efficiencies within our market places. Using an insurance product to pay for routine medical care is a perversion of the system proven throughout our remaining markets. We have effectively removed eighteen percent of our gross domestic product from the competitive system which we have collectively decided is the most efficient way to run an economy. Subsequently we complain about medicine’s myriad inefficiencies.
