Doctor prescribed a drug to me, requested I have labs done again four weeks later. Going to pick up the medication from my pharmacy I am told it needed "prior authorization," I should check back in a few days. I get a call this morning from the nurse at my doctor's office whom tells me another replacement has been called in instead, to take it and have labs done in three months. Three months, I said? She tells me it's less effective and takes longer for results.
It's one thing for a person to opt for an OTC treatment that takes longer for a lesser price (Monistat 1, 3, 7 comes to mind) but for an insurance company to tell me my cure, treatment, alleviation, my life is not worth the best there is to offer angers me. But, hell, these are the same assholes who said I couldn't have an MRI before denying everything, then not before an X-Ray (which found nothing), then not before a CT (which found nothing), THEN allows an MRI that found an injured disc, six months later. Hippocrates would not be amused.
It's one thing for a person to opt for an OTC treatment that takes longer for a lesser price (Monistat 1, 3, 7 comes to mind) but for an insurance company to tell me my cure, treatment, alleviation, my life is not worth the best there is to offer angers me. But, hell, these are the same assholes who said I couldn't have an MRI before denying everything, then not before an X-Ray (which found nothing), then not before a CT (which found nothing), THEN allows an MRI that found an injured disc, six months later. Hippocrates would not be amused.
Doctors order a lot of tests, not just because of fee for service payment, but because they don't have a clue what's wrong with you. They hope the tests will show something, but they don't really know what they're looking for. In any case, they get paid the same thing for making a wrong diagnosis as a right. Why spend a lot of time with a patient, when you can just give him an off-the-cuff diagnosis, give him a prescription for something, and tell him to make an appointment to come back. If the prescription doesn't help, all the better. In a month the doctor can begin the whole futile process over again.
God, I wish "House" wasn't just a fictional TV show. I'd love to go to that hospital and be attended to by a team of doctors who really care.
But enough about real doctors. I much prefer the fictional kind. I love "House." It's a new wrinkle on the "procedural" genre, where the team use medical procedures to solve medical, as opposed to legal, mysteries. I'm working on a TV pilot idea myself, where FBI agents use computer forensics to contend with hackers, suspects with evidence on their hard drives, etc. But there's also a partner/love interest la "Castle" or "Bones." I really think this would make a great series.