Doctors treat you better with more premium insurance?

Question

If a doctor knew that you had the premium insurance or had several million dollars… would he take advantage of that and create pretend illness or injury instead of managing your health? For example: get you the top services—be transferred to an improved hospital facility, access the most excellent equipment available, a healthier treatment plan, put you with more nurses and very well qualified doctors.

Answer 1

Two separate questions in that one. All doctors must behave ethically, they give an oath. So, ethically, they cannot treat patients differently based on their insurance or worth.
First question - "would doctor create a pretend illness" - I would say "no way". There are corrupt doctors up there, but I find doctors to be one of the more ethical group of professionals.

Second question - "would better insurance or more money get you better care" - yes, I think it could. There are public hospitals up there, then there are private, better quality ones up there as well. Also, you can buy a care of a better doctor or some very expensive treatment plan that's not covered by general insurance and could not be afforded by people paying out of pocket. This has little to do with doctors, just economics. If you lived in a more socialistic country (and I was talking about US before) like Canada, Israel, Sweden, you could get much better care without having to pay extra.

Answer 2

As a doctor, this is a complicated question. Unfortunately, patients are indeed treated differently depending on their insurance. I wouldn't go as far as to say that those without insurance are mistreated.

For example, say if I needed to treat someone with diabetes using insulin. Would I use the (more expensive) insulin regimen that as been shown to do a better job? I'd sure do it if the patient had insurance. Now in the patient without insurance, I'd pick the cheaper insulin because I don't want to drain them financially -- some treatment is better than no treatment. This is the inferior treatment, but more appropriate for the uninsured patient.

MOST hospitals take the homeless, undocumented, and uninsured patients to the best procedures, operations, and medications *if they need it*. The government and the hospitals end of footing the bill. The difference in care (with insured vs. non-insured) is not seen as much for emergencies and life-threatening illnesses, but more for health care maintenance and preventive care.

Doctors will not create pretend illnesses for premium insurance patients -- it's unethical and there are always plenty of sick people in need without fabricating more.

Answer 3

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RE :Doctors treat you better with more premium insurance?
If a doctor knew that you had the premium insurance or had several million dollars… would he take advantage of that and create pretend illness or injury instead of managing your health? For example: get you the top services—be transferred to an improved hospital facility, access the most excellent equipment available, a healthier treatment plan, put you with more nurses and very well qualified doctors.
2 following 6 answers

Answer 4

agree wtih the answers above- all very good. i also specifically do not want to know a patient's insurance info before i take care of anyone- i let the billing company do all that scut work. sometimes, it's impossible not to know- for instance, when the patient themselves tells you or with the obviously homeless person... but even in those instances, i treat everyone the same. on the other extreme, i've had "VIP's" like authors, CEOs of companies, professional atheletes - and i've treated them the same way as that homeless person.

i won't deny that there may be unethical doctors out there, but frankly it's hard to "make up" procedures to do on patients that aren't medically indicated. the trouble that's going to cause isn't worth it, and i doubt many doctors out there are doing it.

on another side issue, there are some insurance companies out there that reimburse so poorly for a doctor's service that a doctor can actually lose money. for example, a few years back, some anesthesiologists in california claimed that the california state subsidized health insurance was only reimbursing them something like $90 for labor epidurals, and apparently the epidural kits cost them $100. so not only were they not even getting paid for their time, they were even losing money on the equipment costs. they caused a big stink when they started refusing to treat these patients because they claimed that labor epidurals were an elective service.

Answer 5

You have a point, but I have watched this from inception. The Doctors did not have all these expensive tests and drugs until the Medical "Industry" made them available. Imagine your good old Private Practitioner going to Seminars to force him into using these newfangled methods. Imagine the young people coming up and seeing this is the way it is. Then you have government funded research for drugs and new shiny machines and these all have to be paid off so guess who gets to pay. Enter the Insurance company that insists it only makes 4% profit. Profit after what I would like to know. Enter Medicare and Medicaid and Medicare Part D (Drug Plan) and you have the Federal Government forking out 33 percent of our tax dollar to all the above. And the Insurance Companies are supposed to pay this all. Perhaps if we got the government out of here, things would scale down a bit. My Private Practitioner delivered all my Children for 2000 apiece and we paid him off Office visits were 26.00 and we paid that with our own money. Things have become just a bit out of hand here don't you think?

Answer 6

I normally don't know the patient's insurance status, and I like it that way. Occasionally it''s necessary to backtrack and change a referral or a prescription when it's discovered a patient's particular insurance will not pay for the original but will for an equivalent alternative. This is almost always at the patient's request. And we have enough to do without making up work, even if we were unethical hucksters, thank you very much.

Answer 7

I don't believe that any reputable doctor does this. "First, do no harm" is the "prime directive."

I believe that a doctor is more willing to spend time reviewing your case and really treating you if she thinks she's more likely to get paid. So having insurance can be to your benefit.