Dammit, I am not a patient, I am a CUSTOMER!

[poltr1]

<rant>
Another thing I don't like about the American health care industry, besides them using the Social Security number for identifcation purposes, is the impersonal service I get from health-care providers.

I'm on meds. I'm a regular at the local pharmacy. But there are still clerks there who don't know or use my name. They ask me, "Have you ever filled here before?" and other inane questions. Sometimes I wonder if they ask questions to annoy me. Geez; might as well replace them with robots or something since they do the same thing over and over again.

A couple of providers insist on calling me "James". To me, "James" is a 10-year old kid in a suit that's too small. It's like calling me a derogatory name. When I ask them if there's a place on their form for nicknames, they either say there isn't one, or something about the insurance company requiring my legal name. But the insurance company is not their customer -- I am.

The health care providers are so focused on following the rules and regs that they've lost sight of the reason they're in that business in the first place: their patients, or as we should be considered, their customers.
</rant>

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I'm not a libertarian, but there is truth in what you say. Much of the reason that health care is so expensive today is that most people don't ever see how expensive it is; they just scream for better care, and for a long time employers just ponied up for whatever they wanted. The country developed the mindset that all the care they could possibly use was free. Similarly, the providers are free to charge whatever they feel like for their services, since the person demanding the services doesn't pay the bill. As these trends combine with great scientific advances in what treatment is possible, the whole thing melts down. Health care is up to 20% of GDP, but to get good coverage for everyone with the current private but not not cost restrained system would cost a good bit more.