"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
The Good Cuomo: New York's new State Attorney General is a very busy man. Not only has he been scrutinizing the political shennanigans of the state's governor, but he's put three health insurance companies on notice that their "quality rankings" are suspect. Here are his letters to United Healthcare, Cigna, and Aetna. I don't know if this is something that's an appropriate concern for a state attorney general, or whether it's more of a matter for a state's department of insurance, but the criticisms he levels against the programs are accurate:
Consumers may be encouraged to choose doctors because they are cheap, rather than because they are good.
And to clarify, that's because they are cheap for the insurance company, not necessarily cheap for the patient. posted by Sydney on
8/20/2007 08:20:00 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Of the many valid factors that one may consider in selecting one's physician, the most important single factor for most people is performance - how competent is the physician?
So the question must arise, is every physician about equally competent?
If the answer is "no" doesn't that suggest the public needs access to reliable information about physician competence?
IMO, doctors have not been sufficiently involved in shaping an evaluation system that they can wholeheartedly support, and that will effectively communicate this kind of information to the public.
Sure enough, others are shaping these systems. Meanwhile the physicians' strategy seems limited to resistance.
That strategy seems to me unwise, not only for physicians but also in terms of public health policy.
Physicians could if they chose to do so, take the lead on this issue.
