Health Economics & Doctors Who Do not Settle for Cash
By: nikky Howard
Submitted: 2010-06-29 20:26:35 | Word Count: 857
I was once calling around for my native space attempting to find a doctor to travel get a regular checkup. It had been quite a whereas therefore I was convinced it was time to induce a checkup. Being an entrepreneur there are occasions after I failed to have health insurance as a result of I could not afford it, however at this time I truly did have it. However I didn't feel like waiting 30 days for a appointment therefore I figured I will just acquire this one appointment cash, no big deal right?
Therefore I started calling around to several area doctors solely to seek out one issue, they didn't settle for cash patients!
Now since I'm a entrepreneur I found this terribly odd. With ninety eight% of companies during this county if you call or walk in and offer money they can gladly accept in exchange for product or services. However not with many doctors offices. Currently yes I know that there are some clinics and doctors who only settle for money and whereas think this can be great it's undoubtedly the minority of doctors who operate this way.
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Therefore I had to figure out what was going on. I did some reading and find out about the third party payer system in which the doctors merely bill the insurance firms, medicare, or medicaid for his or her services.
Well I would like I could continually bill third parties for the services my company provides. This might be great! Why is this nice? Well as a result of they are not in the area or on the phone to object to the price I am visiting charge therefore naturally as a business person making an attempt to herald more cash for my family and my employees I can charge as much as I can escape with. No surprise why health care costs in America are insanely out of control!
Currently this is often where most people that haven't been entrepreneurs or worked in higher level business positions lose me. However let me explain with a easy economics lesson.
There are 2 Major "market forces" that bring down prices to a reasonable level relative to the quality of service provided:
1. Competition between me and the opposite guys that do the identical factor I do
2. Negotiations Enabled by Consumer Decisions (freedom)
Competition works like this; if I'm beginning a business as a doctor and there are ten doctors in my city I will do 2 things to determine what I will charge for my services. Initial I will do the mathematics and determine between all my expenses (office rent, medical provides, employees, insurance, etc) how abundant will it cost me to work out a patient. Then I will call around and analysis what my competition is charging for the identical service. Lastly I will set a worth that's lower then the competition as a result of I need to take some of their customers/patients. Obviously value is solely one issue that individuals choose, others are, quality, relationships, customer service, etc. This can be why I will solely hope to take a number of the competitions business not all. Currently the following year another doctor opens a apply and lowers the value a little bit additional hoping to require some of my business away. This forces all the doctors in the area to either, charges less, offer more care, or offer higher care.
Negotiations enabled by customers selections are a byproduct of competition. If I live in Santa Ana and there are twenty doctors that provide similar services of an analogous quality then I can talk to the doctor I favor and like and see if he will come down and match the costs of the other doctors. If it is a monopoly and there's only one clinic or doctor then its his approach or the highway.
Some say that these market forces do not work in health care because of basic differences. One fundamental difference I was explained is that people would like health care not like different merchandise that aren't required to live a healthy life. Well people would like food and food costs don't seem to be skyrocketing like health care costs because we have a tendency to ha?"?ve a food industry that's keep in check by market forces such as competition. Its the shortage of these market forces that have contributed to the rising health care costs.
Anyway there are many alternative factors and laws that limit competition and lift costs like:
1. Limiting choices of insurance corporations (instate)
2. Permitting health care equipment/provide companies to urge slammed with excessive lawsuits and taking one hundred% of the liability
3. Giving the AMA a monopoly over several aspects of the business such as licensing of medical colleges
Author Resource:-
Nik has been writing articles online for nearly 2 years now. Not only does this author specialize in Economics, you can also check out his latest website about:
