WHAT IS CRUEL AND INHUMANE TREATMENT?
When an insurance company is made aware an insured is suffering, and may be getting worse without care and denies approval, isn't that wrong?
When an insurance company is made aware diagnostic imaging or electrodiagnostic testing is needed to properly diagnose the extent of an injury, and they do not allow it to be done, isn't that cruel?
When an insurance company is made aware that a patient has not been able to return to their previous job because their progress is stalled because the insurance company is not authorizing treatment or diagnostics, wouldn't you say that to allow someone to keep suffering, and perhaps get worse to the point of permanent harm, wouldn't you say that is "cruel and inhumane treatment"?
What kind of person, with their fingers at the drawstrings of the vast bag of money big insurance companies have, can have the unmitigated cruelty to tell a patient "We don't believe you're hurt and are not authorizing treatment to you." What kind of creature plays games with other people's lives like that ?
What kind of being will see that someone has been suffering for months or years, and refuses to allow them to get treatment, refuses to allow them to get advanced imaging that is needed to diagnose whether a disc has herniated or not ?
What kind of being throws roadblock after roadblock up to keep a patient's progress stalled by not letting diagnosis and treatment go forward?
Daily, insurance adjusters sit in their little cubicles, denying payment to doctors, blocking access to care from injured workers.
It happens with such regularlity and frequency, that doctors such as I, almost start to accepting this as business as usual.
When I realized that this morning, it frightened me, because I realized that doctors in another time became used to seeing people treated as numbers, became used to seeing people treated inhumanely, and did nothing.
That was Nazi Germany around 60 years ago. One does not have to be a card carrying member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi party official name) to be Nazi-Lite. True evil is treating another person or living creature only as means to an end.
It is seeing another person as a functional unit that is only useful to your own purposes. Now, when healthcare becomes only a matter of insurance companies trying to avoid paying out money at all costs, when adjusters treat injured workers like rats in a maze, throwing walls up when they start making progress toward the exit, in MY book, that is not only torturing the patient, but it is cruel and inhumane, and yes, Nazi-Lite (and Nazi like).
What in the hell is wrong with the system that allows this?
And, even more to the point, how can we as doctors, and you as citizens, NOT scream loudly that we are mad as hell and are not going to take it any more.
There is a saying that I originated about an insurance company that is spreading around the internet, and I feel quoting myself is apropos given the quote. The quote is this :
"To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance."
-Dr. John Raymond Baker,D.C.
I for one am NOT going to be that silent partner in the unconscionable actions I see daily occurring.
Every person must decide for themselves when they are going to speak out against evil. As people, we have heard of the horror of a crowd standing by while a woman is raped, and no one stepping in to stop it.
A study in fact found that the likelihood of any one person initiating an action to stop something like that is inversely proportional to the number of people in attendance.
In other words, it's the "Let George Do It" phenomenon, where people always think they will just let someone else act to stop a wrong. That is beyond apathy, it is being complicit in the wrongs that are happening in my view.
I may not be able to do much as one man, but I will not stay silent and watch this torment of patients go by.
The vast discretionary money available in the gigantic bank accounts of insurance companies are SUPPOSED to be there for paying claims of the insured. What it seems the insurance companies see these monies as, are REVENUE GENERATORS through investment and through getting interest from banks.
If they view the financial resources they have as means of generating more money in their corporate greed , then OF COURSE they will fight like wild snakes to prevent any of that money getting spent on anyone for any reason.
This is the source, in my opinion, of these delays, denials, and disputes. They all become virtual stumbling blocks to slow down or deny disbursement of funds to patients and providers.
I am perplexed as to how anyone can get up every morning and look at themselves in the mirror, knowing the kind of hardship, increased pain and suffering, and mental anguish they inflicted yesterday, day before that, the day before that, and they intend to inflict on people that day, and the day after that, and on and on, all in the sake of keeping money and making more and more in obscene amounts.
Will it change? It will not change until enough citizens rise up and demand it gets changed. You as a consumer can boycott the insurance companies that have divisions that are work comp insurance carriers that continue doing this.
You can write your elected representatives, you can write your local paper, you can write your congressman or congress woman in Washington, you can talk to other people and spread the word this is happening, you can start a blog and talk about it.
As long as we allegedly have freedom of speech, you can do a lot.
If after reading this, you do nothing, then yes, you have just become a silent partner in its continuance !
~Dr. John Raymond Baker,DC Longview Texas
This article is Copyright © 2006 by BAKER CHIROPRACTIC, PA / Dr. John Raymond Baker,DC All Rights are reserved. Fair use is authorized as long as there is attribution of its source.
KEYWORDS FOR THIS ARTICLE : Work Comp, workers compensation, doctors, insurance carriers, carrier, texas, longview, tyler,east texas, denial, dispute, care, mri, surgery, herniated disc, bad faith, allowed to get worse, numbness, tingling, pain, back, neck, mid-back, adjuster, adjusters, peer review, peer to peer, paper shuffle, radiculopathy, on the job, injured, injured worker, IW, good faith and fair dealing, covenant, sue, lawsuit, damages, inaction, deny, authorization, preauthorization, certification department
When an insurance company is made aware diagnostic imaging or electrodiagnostic testing is needed to properly diagnose the extent of an injury, and they do not allow it to be done, isn't that cruel?
When an insurance company is made aware that a patient has not been able to return to their previous job because their progress is stalled because the insurance company is not authorizing treatment or diagnostics, wouldn't you say that to allow someone to keep suffering, and perhaps get worse to the point of permanent harm, wouldn't you say that is "cruel and inhumane treatment"?
What kind of person, with their fingers at the drawstrings of the vast bag of money big insurance companies have, can have the unmitigated cruelty to tell a patient "We don't believe you're hurt and are not authorizing treatment to you." What kind of creature plays games with other people's lives like that ?
What kind of being will see that someone has been suffering for months or years, and refuses to allow them to get treatment, refuses to allow them to get advanced imaging that is needed to diagnose whether a disc has herniated or not ?
What kind of being throws roadblock after roadblock up to keep a patient's progress stalled by not letting diagnosis and treatment go forward?
Daily, insurance adjusters sit in their little cubicles, denying payment to doctors, blocking access to care from injured workers.
It happens with such regularlity and frequency, that doctors such as I, almost start to accepting this as business as usual.
When I realized that this morning, it frightened me, because I realized that doctors in another time became used to seeing people treated as numbers, became used to seeing people treated inhumanely, and did nothing.
That was Nazi Germany around 60 years ago. One does not have to be a card carrying member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi party official name) to be Nazi-Lite. True evil is treating another person or living creature only as means to an end.
It is seeing another person as a functional unit that is only useful to your own purposes. Now, when healthcare becomes only a matter of insurance companies trying to avoid paying out money at all costs, when adjusters treat injured workers like rats in a maze, throwing walls up when they start making progress toward the exit, in MY book, that is not only torturing the patient, but it is cruel and inhumane, and yes, Nazi-Lite (and Nazi like).
What in the hell is wrong with the system that allows this?
And, even more to the point, how can we as doctors, and you as citizens, NOT scream loudly that we are mad as hell and are not going to take it any more.
There is a saying that I originated about an insurance company that is spreading around the internet, and I feel quoting myself is apropos given the quote. The quote is this :
"To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance."
-Dr. John Raymond Baker,D.C.
I for one am NOT going to be that silent partner in the unconscionable actions I see daily occurring.
Every person must decide for themselves when they are going to speak out against evil. As people, we have heard of the horror of a crowd standing by while a woman is raped, and no one stepping in to stop it.
A study in fact found that the likelihood of any one person initiating an action to stop something like that is inversely proportional to the number of people in attendance.
In other words, it's the "Let George Do It" phenomenon, where people always think they will just let someone else act to stop a wrong. That is beyond apathy, it is being complicit in the wrongs that are happening in my view.
I may not be able to do much as one man, but I will not stay silent and watch this torment of patients go by.
The vast discretionary money available in the gigantic bank accounts of insurance companies are SUPPOSED to be there for paying claims of the insured. What it seems the insurance companies see these monies as, are REVENUE GENERATORS through investment and through getting interest from banks.
If they view the financial resources they have as means of generating more money in their corporate greed , then OF COURSE they will fight like wild snakes to prevent any of that money getting spent on anyone for any reason.
This is the source, in my opinion, of these delays, denials, and disputes. They all become virtual stumbling blocks to slow down or deny disbursement of funds to patients and providers.
I am perplexed as to how anyone can get up every morning and look at themselves in the mirror, knowing the kind of hardship, increased pain and suffering, and mental anguish they inflicted yesterday, day before that, the day before that, and they intend to inflict on people that day, and the day after that, and on and on, all in the sake of keeping money and making more and more in obscene amounts.
Will it change? It will not change until enough citizens rise up and demand it gets changed. You as a consumer can boycott the insurance companies that have divisions that are work comp insurance carriers that continue doing this.
You can write your elected representatives, you can write your local paper, you can write your congressman or congress woman in Washington, you can talk to other people and spread the word this is happening, you can start a blog and talk about it.
As long as we allegedly have freedom of speech, you can do a lot.
If after reading this, you do nothing, then yes, you have just become a silent partner in its continuance !
~Dr. John Raymond Baker,DC Longview Texas
This article is Copyright © 2006 by BAKER CHIROPRACTIC, PA / Dr. John Raymond Baker,DC All Rights are reserved. Fair use is authorized as long as there is attribution of its source.
KEYWORDS FOR THIS ARTICLE : Work Comp, workers compensation, doctors, insurance carriers, carrier, texas, longview, tyler,east texas, denial, dispute, care, mri, surgery, herniated disc, bad faith, allowed to get worse, numbness, tingling, pain, back, neck, mid-back, adjuster, adjusters, peer review, peer to peer, paper shuffle, radiculopathy, on the job, injured, injured worker, IW, good faith and fair dealing, covenant, sue, lawsuit, damages, inaction, deny, authorization, preauthorization, certification department
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