With a Universal Health care system, would wait times go up because more people are seeing a Dr?

Why are waits in the Dr's office long now? Why do they overbook? Does it have something to do with HMO's allotting only a certain amount of time to see a patient after which, it's on the Dr's time?

But isn't that something that is positive? Getting everyone into a doctor? If you have to wait, why is that a bad thing if its on the behalf of a society? Also, maybe the fact that I can quickly walk into a walk-in clinic helps to make sure the hospitals aren't overloaded (in the states, clinics wont take you last minute, especially without being a former patient, and send you to the ER)


Access to preventative care can definitely *reduce* wait time.


BTW, I can't speak for all single-payer nations, but wait times where I live in Victoria *without* an appointment, walking in, range 5 to 20 minutes. Now, that isn't wait times to get into a waiting room, thats wait times to get into the actual doctor. Clinic care is immediate here. Emergency care is immediate here. Elective surgery depends on how busy the doctor/facility you choose is and how important the doctor decides it is for you to have it done quickly

In th ebeginning, there will probably be an influx of new patients ..really just people who have been putting off going, because they could not afford it, but it will stabilize, and people will go when they need to. I have never met anyone who went to the doctor all the time, because they could.. People go when they are sick.


We need MORE doctors, and FEWER insurance companies/HMOs/Managed care facilities, etc.

I read a while back that medical schools deliberately keep the graduation numbers low. Wd surely have plenty of smart people who would love to be able to become doctors. This should be a part of any new plan. Smart people who want to be doctors, should be subsidized, so we can GET more doctors.

two things come to mind.

There are only so many teaching hospitals and they can only handle so many students once they move past the classroom and into the hospital.

Only about 2% of current students plan on primary care, one reason is the cost of school and the debt they will have when they graduate.

I am underemployed and can not afford $100 to $200 to walk through the door of a Doctor's office.

Wait times in the states can be infinite

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and low-income people qualify for FREE prescribed drugs when necessary

but then again

we don't got no bad-ass war machine to pay for . . .

sumthing to ponder

:freak:

It would depend on how the program is structured. My oldest son is fortunate enough to work for a company that provides 100% medical coverage; no co-pays, no fees for anylthing. He thinks that's a bit absurd, as people who have to pay nothing out of pocket access medical care for really trivial reasons that they might not if they had to cover a co-pay, no matter how small. That could be a large explanation for longer wait times. As with the rest of life, the devil is in the details.

They said no. If they had an appointment, their wait time was no longer than ours. There are also stats that doctors spend more time with the patients because compensation is better than with our insurers and HMOs. Also, with more people seeing the doctor, it seems that the obvious answer would be to train more doctors to meet the need.

It showed that if there was no cost involved that people tended to overuse and abuse the system, but that a very minimal cost i.e. ($5 or $10) seemed to prevent that. I wish I could find the story, it was very interesting.

David

If he is assured of being paid regardless of who walks through the door, I'm certain responsible doctors wouldn't encourage this behavior because his time is needed to attend to more serious patients' needs.

I don't know if it was accurate or not, it's just what I heard on NPR. I could easily see the point though.

David

pre interview most people to find out exactly what kind of appointment they need or if maybe they need to see someone else. After a while you get to know the hypochondriacs and you steer them to maybe a nurse practitioner first if it's just a band aid or prescription that's needed or if they really need to see the doctor. The NP visits are shorter and cheaper.

According to the story a fee of as little as $5 is enough to limit the number of patients to those who are really sick or true hypochondriacs. I actually prefer to see my NP, although I'm not charged any less. Most of the time I have a very good idea of what's wrong and my NP is quick to consult my Dr. if she get's in over her head. It always bothered me when I saw patient transported via ambulance because the didn't take their meds because they couldn't afford them but somehow found enough money for cigarettes, a DVD from blockbuster and a regular diet of fast food. People stepping up and taking better care of themselves is going to be essential to keeping costs down in a single payer system.

David

if we have universal health care, especially if we have no or very, very low co-pays, visits to doctors will go up. That's one of the reasons I advocate having a modest co-pay, payable BEFORE you see the doctor, of say, $20. The thing that will sink health care reform is if a bunch of people have to take a whole day off of work to sit behind people who don't work for an appointment.

The Repukes probably will have an ad showing some ethnic minority woman with half a dozen kids, all going in for the sniffles, while the working person has to sit in a waiting room, losing either pay from a job, or sucking up a whole day of sick leave, with their boss in the background (in the worker's mind) saying, "You were gone all day Wednesday, just for a doctor's appointment??!!"

Having cash deductables means that only those who are truly sick will avail themselves of services. Otherwise, we risk clogging up the healthcare services, and inspiring people who are not accustomed to waiting for more than a brief period to vote Rethug just to get rid of universal healthcare.

All non emergency medical appointments are booked through a GP. Your local doctor. All appointments are 99% within 48 hours. The GP can prescribe, sort out the snifflers and refer those who need specialist treatment to a Specialist Doctor in a hospital.

There are also walk in centres where people are seen instantly by nurses for minor cuts, bruises and sniffles.

an entire infrastructure has evolved around national healthcare, it will take some time for that to happen in the US. However, I'm familiar with that entity in the Seattle area known as Group Health Cooperative, they would let the janitor treat you if they thought they could get away with it. Fortunately, during the time I was covered by them (in my twenties) I did not need to use them much. My wife at that time had a bit of a struggle with them, but at least they couldn't pretend that her pregnancies were "all in her head".

If universal healthcare resembles what Group Health and Kaiser Permanente have become, then I forsee a rapid return to Rethuglican leadership. If ordinary people who are sparse users of healthcare get run through the gauntlet as though they were hypochondriacs, they will clamor for a return to the old system quickly.

Seeing the doctor is "free" but people book the appointments and still not show up.

however they are often also useful for "on spec" patients.

eventually there wouldn't be as many sick and very sick people so in time, less people should need high levels of care.

For what it's worth, My Dr. tells me he is allowed 7 minutes per patient. I can't even imagine a working day like that and you sure as hell are not getting quality care in 7 minutes.

The healthcare system in this country is simply barbaric.

Thanks for everything Congress. Oh I forgot, they don't give a fuck. THEY have excellent medical coverage thanks to the taxpayer tit.

It might be offset by reducing reimbursement to the providers, though. The incresed cost to the system of insuring everyone has to be met somehow.

i make my appointments for my days off from work -- which are during the week.

that way i don't book any thing else -- inevitably the wait is far far longer than the appointment.

as a "preferred provider" with any of the insurance companies because they require that he see a tremendous number of patients a day. He says he prefers to take more time with each of his patients and he doesn't want people stacked up in the waiting room. I appreciate his stance...the problem is..my company changed insurance companies and they won't pay a nickel if I see anyone out of the "plan".
I just loooove when the republicans talk about losing our choices with a single-payer program. My choice is to see who the insurance company tells me to...or pay 100 percent out of pocket!

Would it increase wait times? Not really. There will always be people who run to the doctor for a zit, but it's made up for by the people who only get a check-up every five years. Yes, this happens in single-payer countries as well.

My experience is with the UK system. If it's to the ER and it's life critical, then nope - wait time will be as it is now, you get seen you get treated, you get stabilized. If it's the sniffles or routine medical care, then again there's no real wait - my docs operated the early morning on a walk-in basis and later on routine appointments for more routine health matters. However if you need a hip replacement or some other medical procedure that will greatly improve your quality of life but not seeing to it right away won't kill you then you could expect to have a wait.

If it's the wait time in the Dr's office itself you're concerned about, well that happens in the UK too. Even though it's free to see a doctor, there are still plenty of no-shows. Therefore there there are often "work-ins" just in case other patients don't show up - the doctors literally do bet on people not showing up and those short notice ones are helped and if the regular appointment doesn't show, well no problem since the doc has seen someone - but if they do show then it does slow things down a bit. Plus under certain circumstances the doctors may be called on a house call (yes doctors in the UK do make house calls) and might get hung up there too.

A streamlined system should help a bit with that, once it gets settled in place.

You don't make any money unless bodies are crammed into and out of examination rooms as quickly as possible, with tests, referrals, etc. to bring in more money. This is not to say that doctors are necessarily greedy; the problem is the free-market nature of it all that requires them to do that or go out of business.

There was actually an informative and interesting report on this on NPR last night, with the analyst suggesting that a better system is to focus on preventive medicine and housing a number of different specialists in one "clinic" setup to reduce times and costs.