Description

Over the last 12 years a number of people visiting America's emergency rooms has soared. Yet here's what's surprising: The number of low-income people going to ER's has not increased. The increase has come almost entirely among middle-class people and many of them have insurance.

So why do they go to the ER? Why aren't they seeing their own doctor? Many people think that they know what's wrong with the health care system in this country. Millions of people are uninsured. And sure, that's part of the problem. But that's not the whole problem. The whole problem is bigger than that.

What's interesting about the fee schedule is that it's all about what it costs the doctor to produce the service in terms of time and education. Never does anyone ask, "How much benefit is there for the patient?" This might be a service that, on average, lengthens the patient's life by 5 months, as opposed to having your diabetes controlled for 30 years, which means that you live a lot longer and you never have an amputation. And yet we would pay much more for that technically very skilled procedure that gave you another couple of months, because we look at it entirely in terms of the work on the part of the doctor rather than the benefit to the patient.

Money Driven Medicine the documentary;
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08...