Morning Ed: Health {2017.20.15.W}

Christopher Carr says:

He6 – what people don’t realize (and I know that you do) is that in order for the nurse to be able to squirt fluid in your ear to remove the wax, an administrative person had to answer your phone call and block off a 30 minute appointment for you, you had to come in and pay 20 dollars to an attendant to park in a garage, another administrative person had to check you in on a computer system from the 1980s that the clinic is required to use “because HIPAA” that costs 100,000 dollars a year to license, you had to wait for 45 minutes in the reception area because the previous appointment showed up 30 minutes late, another administrative person handed you an iPad that the clinic was required to purchase and implement because some MHA with power disproportionate to medical knowledge learned “iPads are good” in a 3-week quality improvement night course taught by another administrative person, you were escorted to the clinic area by another administrative person, weighed, had your temperature taken (because viruses), were asked some questions about socioeconomic status, whether you are being abused, smoking status, etc., given information from another administrative person about quitting smoking, eating vegetables, and exercise, as if you didn’t know these things were good for you, saw the nurse and told your story about earwax to the nurse, after 15 more minutes of waiting saw the doctor and told the exact same story to the doctor, who spent 12 years in postsecondary training and 30 seconds with you in order to go chart about your iPad responses, normal weight, normal temperature, status of not being abused, stage of change regarding your smoking status, unconcerning diet and exercise habits, and your earwax, in addition to documenting a 12-point review of systems for billing purposes, such that you have no cough, sore throat, impotence, borborygmia, pituitary apoplexy, etc. so that some other administrative person can assign codes that were devised by a 2000-person team traveling from all over the world for monthly conferences over the course of the last 12 years in order to bill your insurance company through your plan that is managed by a department of your employer’s office which liaisons with your insurance company, which will initially deny coverage for your visit because the doctor forgot to ask you about sexual risk factors and HIV status, but will then be approved after another administrative person audits the medical record and brings the discrepancy to the attention of the doctor, who then makes the adjustment 6 weeks later at 7PM once all the other notes for that day’s clinic are finished, before using a spoon with patent-pending LED lights on it that cost 120,000 dollars to develop in order to optimally scoop the earwax out of your ear once the noncompressible 0.9%, pH neutral saline which itself is autoclaved and manufactured in a facility in Wyoming and cost 65 dollars to manufacture, package, and ship to your clinic, has worked its way between the wax and the tympanic membrane, before depositing the wax laden spoon in the red marked biohazard containment unit for disposal by an additional individual properly trained in the disposal of biological specimens who completed a 2-day course on that topic taught by a trained certified administrator appointed by the hospital. No doubt you’re getting the best earwax removal care in the world! But really, who knows why healthcare in the United States is so expensive.Report