Flaws in the Healthcare System

Insurance providers, not doctors, are deciding where and what kind of procedures their patients can get. Insurance companies choose who can provide care to you, regardless of what is actually best for the patient. I have seen this in both my professional life as well as my personal life.

Insurance companies are in it for the money, not the people. My insurance company works with HealthPartners and I recently went in to see the doctor. They referred me to a specialist and told me they would be able to help and give me some answers. Once I got to my second doctor's appointment, the first specialist, I was only there for 30 minutes- 15 of which was spent in the waiting room. She only took blood tests, which they had already done at my first appointment. She said she did not have the equipment needed for the tests they wanted to run, so she then referred me to two other specialists and told me to make appointments with them.

I got to my third appointment, the second specialist, and again I was only there for about 30 minutes- half of that was waiting time. They weren't able to give me any answers from the previous appointment, where I had blood tests taken, but they ran the tests they initially wanted me to do. They still were not very helpful, as they were extremely vague. They then referred me to a third specialist. I called to make an appointment for this doctor and they said they had to send me an online form to fill out before they could make an appointment for me. A week later I called again since I still had not received the forms and they were finally able to get me an appointment- but not until late January.

The whole point of this blog is to show that insurance companies and some medical facilities, such as HealthPartners, send their patients around to make more money, which makes it more difficult than it needs to be for patients to get the care they need to begin with. As professionals, they should know which specialists could help and they should send their patients to them to begin with, not make them see multiple in between. The flaws in the healthcare system give more money and more power to the insurance companies. They are in it for the money, not the patients.