Health insurance companies including Indianapolis' own WellPoint Inc. have been relentless in trying to suppress spiraling
health costs. So relentless, in fact, that doctors are pushing back.
Physician groups in Kokomo, Rushville and other cities are refusing to take new patients insured through WellPoint's Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance.
In Indianapolis, Community Health Network and its 170 doctors are in a contract dispute with Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare. Late last month Community CEO Bill Corley said the two entities had been unable to agree to "reasonable reimbursement rates."
In a case followed by IBJ reporter J.K. Wall, Internal Medicine Associates in Bloomington is threatening to not treat Anthem patients, period. The upshot: The patients can pay out of pocket or find new insurance if they want to keep seeing Internal Medicine docs.
Government figures show the average wage for all doctors and surgeons in the state is $174,500.
Are doctors underpaid and caught in the middle, or are they part of the problem?
Physician groups in Kokomo, Rushville and other cities are refusing to take new patients insured through WellPoint's Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance.
In Indianapolis, Community Health Network and its 170 doctors are in a contract dispute with Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare. Late last month Community CEO Bill Corley said the two entities had been unable to agree to "reasonable reimbursement rates."
In a case followed by IBJ reporter J.K. Wall, Internal Medicine Associates in Bloomington is threatening to not treat Anthem patients, period. The upshot: The patients can pay out of pocket or find new insurance if they want to keep seeing Internal Medicine docs.
Government figures show the average wage for all doctors and surgeons in the state is $174,500.
Are doctors underpaid and caught in the middle, or are they part of the problem?
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Those extraneous twelve thousand dollars are passed on in the form of higher premiums and of course any insurer worth their weight is going to get a little something for themselves by padding a couple thousand dollars of their own onto those higher premiums.
This situation festered and grew because of complacency on the part of employers who habitually agreed to higher premiums for their workers health plans, so the insurers had no reason to contest the health care costs that were rising at four or more times the rate of inflation.
Bravo to Wellpoint and United Health for attempting to put an end to this ridiculous fat cat rocket ship of greed, by cutting out their own excess and the excess of the entire health care train.
Only insurance execs are getting rich in this environment. This is what happens when you have unbridled greed and MBAs making profits instead of caring for people. Also you have politicians that are best friends with the insurance lobby. If you don't believe that, go visit the statehouse and see a health care committee meeting where the only people testifying are insurance lobbyists. They own the process. The patients and physicians are left out. Why are we not there?? We cannot afford to leave our practices for a day.
I am exceptionally tired of people who know nothing about how medical services are provided and paid for pontificating on what is wrong. Get some inside knowledge before you blame physicians for the many faults of our system.
It's not the doctors who are getting our money!
It would seem that the majority of the money in the industry is not getting where it needs to go. The money should be going into medical education, research-and-development and the doctors, instead, it seems to be stopping in the insurance providers hands indefinately.
It's amazing to me that all these so-called insurance companies build fancy new facilities every day and pay their CEO's hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries (just how much of a salary does the Anthem CEO deserve?). That money is spent BY the people who need the care and it doesn't seem to get TO those who actually provide the care.
It's obvious the system is broken (even without Michael Moore having to tell it), thank the powers that be that I rarely need medical care. I do pay for insurance, but have only twice used my benefits in the last few years, so these so-called providers aren't really providing anything to me, they're providing my money to their own uses.
I'm pretty disgusted with the system, almost enough to drop my medical insurance completely!