The Nightmare of Private Health Insurance

if someone asked me if I were to do medicine all over again that would probably one of the main reasons why I would choose not to [Music] I spent almost as much time talking with health insurance companies as I do talking with my patients prednisone I had a family who came in the child had an acute asthma exacerbation with an immediate need for prednisone she goes to the pharmacy with the prescription that I have been writing for the past 15 years but for whatever reason the insurance company decided that I need to complete a prior authorization so I sat on the phone for 30 minutes trying to get a pre authorization by the time I

finished the pharmacy was closed so now this child has to go to the emergency department to get his second dose of prednisone that's an insane amount of cost just in terms of the emergency room visit but also in terms of time and it impacts me every single day my support of a system like Medicare for all actually starts when I was a little girl my watched my family suffer from having a lack of access to care growing up in a rural part of Louisiana being a Medicaid recipient myself as a child I noticed

early on the difference in care and it's one of the reasons why I pursued a career in medicine and I can completely see that there are two different healthcare systems if you have health insurance and if you don't here locally when you look at Washington DC if you are a black woman living in Southeast DC you have a higher chance of dying during childhood I can actually tell a story about my own mother we went to the hospital not too long ago I was worried that she was having a stroke and it wasn't until I pulled my doctor card that her care changed I think that they saw her as stereotypical overweight

african-american woman who likely didn't have health insurance and it wasn't until I went back in there with her and told them that I was a doctor that beings changed even after that my mom has received at least 15 different hospital bills from 10 different health care providers that saw her I mean it was insane we still get hospital bills and it was a month ago and I'm like you're billing for the gauze good grief one of the important things that people have to realize is how much lack of insurance impacts them even if it's not a direct impact

what you have to think about is the financial impact on the country as a whole it isn't surprising that we spend the most money on health care but has some of the worst health outcomes compared to any other developed country and I think it's a true reflection of how we see health help is seen as a business and not a right and when we have something like Medicare for all there's a shift in the energy and it becomes a right