Sue and I attended the 2008 Mayo Clinic National Symposium on Health Care Reform. The Mayo Clinic kindly put us up as guests to help add the patient view to their conference. Although the conference talked about many interesting aspects of reform, the patient view seemed foreign to most of the attendees.
I decided that one thing to bring up is how horrible it is for us and many other patients we know to deal with hundreds of bills, insurance forms and letters, and many other non-health related health insurance issues. And we have been very lucky compared to most others in similar situations who can't afford to pay or have time to deal with all the co-pays, deductibles, prescription and over the counter drugs, housing near the hospital for months at a time, or deal with bizarre denials of coverage for small to large things. And patients and families are required to spend considerable effort dealing with non-medical issues from health care institutions and insurance companies at the detriment of getting better. In other countries patients are protected from much of this type of victimization. So I proposed banning all health bills, health insurance forms, and all other paperwork which interferes with the care of patients.
Several patients and some others did come over to Sue and me to tell us that they were appreciative for voicing this viewpoint. Unfortunately, when recommendations for reform came up for a vote, this one came dead last. See the last proposal at this link. I wish those voting against the proposal could have been there for when Sue would cry sitting in front of the piles of incomprehensible bills.
