Are You My Doctor?

A co-worker of mine recently needed to find a new primary care physician, as one does when moving to a new town and getting a new insurance company. So I got to hear her call number after number on her insurance company’s guide to available doctors and have various versions of the following conversation:

“Hello, is this Dr. So-and-so’s office? Yes, I’d like to make a new patient appointment. Well, you’re listed as taking new patients. Gargantuan Health Insurance Corp. You’ve never even heard of them? Well, they’ve heard of you. They said you were in-network!” 

I am not surprised that a list is wrong or woefully out of date. After all, patient lists fill up, people switch jobs, practices change their insurance policies. So it wouldn’t be a surprise to have a few outdated items in a directory.

But apparently that incredibly frustrating process is more or less deliberate.

Providing accurate and up-to-date guides is not easy, but it’s not impossible. But an insurer has every reason to avoid doing it. An incorrect and woefully out-of-date list is a barrier to access, and putting up barriers to access is good for the bottom line. What better way to prevent people from using expensive medical services than by making it hard for them to find a doctor?

The problem is especially acute for mental health care, because it’s more expensive to provide, and people in psychiatric distress find it especially difficult to navigate actively hostile processes, meaning that dark pattern of bad lists is especially good at keeping them from using their insurance. 

But it’s good for the stock price, right?

Kind of cool
How prison tattoos are made.
Everything that’s wrong with Uber.
A list of names of kinds of wind.

Thisisfine.gif
Diabetics risking their lives for discount insulin.
Record-breaking melt event in Greenland and Arctic Ocean.
A nine-year-old used his allowance to pay for the lunches of his impoverished classmates.

Normal Mainstream Republicans
Republican legislators in Oregon have walked out in order to break quorum and avoid voting on a climate change bill. That’s an OK, if extreme, stunt in support of impending climate disaster. They have been ordered to return and will be pursued by the state police. This is an escalation, but it’s sort of part of the game. One legislator has gotten an antigovernment militia to provide security and has told the police they’d better be sending heavily armed men who are willing to die if they expect to drag him back to his job to vote on a climate change bill. Yeah.

Meanwhile, Pew Social Trends notes that “There is a sharp partisan divide in attitudes about interracial marriage… Only 28% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents” believe that interracial marriage is a good thing.

And there’s that republican operative melting down over metric system conspiracy theory.

Cultivating joy
Big cat surprised by small cat.
This very round bird.
Orphaned kittens need to be taught how to groom themselves. This is how that’s done.
Dogs who eat too fast can be given special bowls that slow down their gulping. Some dogs who eat too fast will have none of that.
This chinchilla.
This small bird with a giant schnozz.
This incredible gymnastic cat.