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I'll once again note that various excuses about how a treating physician probably can't really know what things cost ring hollow for anyone with a decent veterinarian. That end of things is admittedly a newish experience for me, but when I take my dog to the vet and he presents treatment options, I can inquire what they cost and his reply is, "about [$X], but I can get the exact number for you if you want". That physicians cannot do this for much narrower ranges of practice indicates an incentive structure for not knowing what things cost.
I genuinely believe this is the part that triggers so many people to feel the way they do about Luigi. Guys like Brian Thompson make tens of millions of dollars and if anyone has a problem with it, they can get their lawyers to take it up with his lawyers, who will all make a shitload of money arguing with each other, lying for hire and making arguments that no one actually believes and that most laymen can't even understand. I'm surprised that others are surprised that profitable Kafka rituals occasionally trigger rage.
To me, the complaint is very clearly with the doctor (or practice/hospital -whatever), not the executive! So I'm not sure why this would make people admire Luigi.
The doctor doesn't want to fuck you over, neither does the hospital or practice. The health insurance executive however, wants nothing else but to fuck you over.
In my experience, hospitals are more than happy to screw over patients in billing as long as they don't complain too much after the fact. Surprise out-of-network anaesthesiologists used to be common (now prohibited), and I've seen hospitals try to tack on not-covered-by-insurance fees that show up much later and weren't disclosed in advance (not that they ever give straightforward billing answers in advance). Yeah, they'll "kindly" remove or waive those if you call and complain a bunch (probably marking it down as "charity"), but it's really annoying and not always worth my billing rate.
There are scum bags everywhere, for sure, but the perverse incentives start with the insurance companies. You can't pull a surprise out of network anaesthesiologist out of your pocket if there aren't any networks. It's the insurance companies who ban pharmacies and doctors from talking about the price of medication and offering cheaper alternatives. And it was insurance companies who instituted the policy of denying every claim first and forcing patients to pull teeth getting their claim covered.
Can you provide citation/further reading on this? A brief search actually turned up basically the opposite complaint (in multiple articles that were clearly founded on pro-doctor
propagandaadvocacy), so I'm definitely interested if the surface internet has it all wrong and no one has been talking about these secret bans.The insurance companies want cheap alternatives. It's doctors and pharma companies who run advertising for big pharma, patients then demand treatments that are extremely expensive, then insurance has to pay for it.
Hold up, are you saying doctors want patients to spend more money on meds?
I'm saying that doctors often appear in drug advertising, sure.
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