Dr. Wacasey’s Guide to Buying Health Insurance (pt 2)

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “The latest craze for about the last ten years has been corporatization where the hospitals, the local hospitals come in and buy out the practices of the doctors.  They turn those doctors into employees. They tell the doctors: Don’t worry about the financial angle of this.  They turned the doctors into what they turned the patients into.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Let me give you my example.  I worked for Sirius XM Satellite Radio for 13 years.  Nine of those years I was an employee.  I never asked to be an employee.  They basically made me be an employee.  One of the benefits I got was a health insurance policy which was heavily subsidized to United Healthcare.  When I was terminated in June of this year, I was then paying the whole shebang for the health insurance, for myself and Mrs. Church, that amounted to, I can’t remember, $450 a month or something to that effect.  There were large deductibles in there.

Here’s the thing.  When I would go to the doctor, my copay was $20.  When I would go to get a prescription filled at Walgreens, the co-pay was either $10 or $20 depending on whether it was generic or brand name or whatever the case may be.  All of that ended in June.  Mike still gets sick.  Mike still has a bad back.  Mike still has horrible psoriasis he deals with from time to time, and other assorted maladies.  I went to go see the doctor the other day.  Before I went, when I called to make the appointment, I told Jenny, the receptionist – I’ve been going there for years.  Can you believe this, Dr. Wacasey?  I actually have a family practitioner.  He’s still in business, too.

Dr. Wacasey:  Wait a minute.  You mean the health insurance company didn’t take your doctor away?  It’s a ridiculous concept, but we can get into that later.

Mike:  He told me last time I went, when I was there last week, he goes: Mr. Church, almost all the people I went to med school with, colleagues of mine right here in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, all those doctors have sold out.  The hospital has bought them all.  They sold their offices and they now work for the hospital.

Dr. Wacasey:  Can I interrupt you for a second?

Mike:  Absolutely.  Please do.

Dr. Wacasey:  Why do you think that is?  Why do you think that corporate medicine has taken over the individual doctor’s practice?  Any idea?

Mike:  Why don’t you explain it?

Dr. Wacasey:  Okay.  The bottom line is, if I’m taking your health insurance – I’m out here as a solo practitioner, a family practice guy.  I’m out here taking your health insurance.  When it comes to negotiation time – every year we have to negotiate these 60-page-long contracts where I’ve got to sit down and discuss with you: How much do I get to charge you for a sore throat exam?  How much do I get to charge your insurance for belly pain?  What do I get to charge you for an aspirin?  That gets so time-consuming.  It’s really a David against Goliath picture here.  The doctor is up against this gigantic corporation that can just willy-nilly decide: We’re not going to pay you nothing.  Guess what?  The doctor is left out in the cold.  The doctors had to join these networks, had to join these independent practice associations.

[private FP-Monthly|FP-Yearly|FP-Yearly-WLK|FP-Yearly-So76]

The latest craze for about the last ten years has been corporatization where the hospitals, the local hospitals come in and buy out the practices of the doctors.  They turn those doctors into employees. They tell the doctors: Don’t worry about the financial angle of this.  They turned the doctors into what they turned the patients into, and that is: Don’t worry about any of the financial stuff.  We’ll take care of everything.  Basically these guys come and they tell you the patient: It’s only $20 for you.  Don’t worry about it.  We’ll handle all the rest.  Then they tell the doctor: Just show up and we’ll pay you an hourly wage.  We’ll take care of all the rest.

That system is crumbling.  That system is gone.  Do you know why?  Do you have any idea why the – the great fix to our great American health care dilemma is here.  The best news of all is it doesn’t require much if any legislation to fix it.  It’s free.  All it is is a change in the attitude.  It’s like the Hank Williams Jr. song, attitude adjustment.  All these people need is an attitude adjustment.  The attitude adjustment that they need to understand is this.  If they have a $1,000, $3,000, $5,000 deductible, guess what?  You’re a consumer.  You don’t have health insurance anymore.  Excuse me, now you have health insurance.  It’s like your homeowners insurance or your car insurance.  You’ve got to pay lots of money to have a policy every year that you never get to use, or, as I point out in my book, since people are so addicted to the idea that my health insurance pays for my health care, they will spend thousands of dollars more, waste thousands of dollars more buying the silver and gold plans just to have the illusion of better coverage.

Mike:  Dr. Wacasey is on the Dude Maker Hotline with us.  Those of you that are more of the libertarian stripe, you’re going to love this conversation.  This is all about how the market actually can solve these problems.  I just want to jump in here so we can have a little dialogue.  I perceive and would deal with this and talk about this problem from two angles.  The one that you’re on here, which is the business aspect and how the system is rigged and how the big money has aligned to take money from the little guy so there’s more big money.  To me, the other part of the equation that’s equally if not more important is: Why is medicine a business?  We’re talking about saving lives here.

Dr. Wacasey:  A couple of things.  First of all, you’re exactly right.  We are in a free market.  That’s exactly what health care has turned into by virtue of the fact that the health insurers don’t cover your health care expenses anymore.  The problem is, people don’t realize it.  If they were to realize it by the millions and then start taking advantage of it instead of throwing down their United Healthcare card, pulling out their Master Card and saying: Hey, how much is this visit going to cost me?  What is this procedure going to cost me?  Guess what that will do once enough people start doing that?  The price will come down drastically.  Those prices will then meet up with the competitive free market forces that we face in every other aspect of our lives.

Secondly, to get to your question, I would ask you this.  I’ve got a script I’m trying to get Prager University folks on the video.  I’ve got several that I’ve sent them.  They won’t get back to me, if any of them are listening.  In any case, one of the videos, the one I’m putting out tomorrow, Is health care a right or is it a privilege?

Mike:  Privilege.

Dr. Wacasey:  Really?  It’s neither, Mike.  It’s a service industry.  Let me explain what I mean by that.  When I was in second grade, I was taught that there are three things that are really essential for life.  I think they missed a few here, like the internet.  The basics I was taught was food, water, and shelter.  Now, I ask you this.  Are any of those a right?  Or are they a privilege?  No, none of those are a right.  We do have government programs in place that will help people out, but you have to qualify for those.  I certainly wouldn’t qualify for aid or assistance on my water bill every month.  I make too much money for that.  So do you.  We have to qualify to get this help from the government.  It’s not a right.  Not even the most Neo-Nazi, fascist, liberal, weirdo progressives would say that those are rights.

Are they privileges, though?  A privilege – let’s look at the definition of what a privilege is.  It’s an advantage given or held out for a specific group of people, as in those who can only afford it.  Food, water, and shelter aren’t privileges either.

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They’re just service industries.  Even the quasi-governmental regulated utilities, the water industry, it’s still a service industry.  The bottom line is, if those three basics aren’t rights or privileges, then why do we even talk in terms of healthcare being a right or a privilege?

It’s very simple.  This was invented by the progressives, by the left way back when to champion new rights not guaranteed to us under your favorite document, the Constitution and the amendments.  They didn’t even know what health care was back then.  Health care was leeches to them.  Health care now is something viewed by the left as a right so that they can make the argument – first of all, it sets them up on the moral high ground because we’re saying it’s a right and everyone should have it.  Health care should be a given – a doctor was quoted in 1992 as saying: That’s ridiculous because we need food, water, and shelter almost every day of our lives.  Today it’s 50 degrees.  You better believe I need shelter in 50 degrees.

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Mike:  You need a Crusader zipper-down fleece from The Crusade Channel.

Dr. Wacasey:  I need food, water, and shelter virtually every day.  I’ve seen patients during my 23-year career in medicine that have gone weeks, months, years – I’ve seen people go most of their lives without any health care.  Health care is definitely not a necessity in life.  Don’t get me wrong, we can alleviate pain and suffering.  We can even prolong your life.  We can certainly make you healthier within healthcare, but not everybody, in fact hardly anybody, needs health care on a routine basis.

Mike:  That’s right.  Dr. Wacasey is on the Dude Maker Hotline with us.  The eBook is called Dr. Wacasey’s Guide to Buying Health Insurance and Health Care.

End Mike Church Show Transcript