Primary Care Physician's Afraid of My Insurance

It never ceases to amaze me how insane this nation's medical system has become.

As you may know by reading some of my older posts, my family has been through the ringer with health insurance. Even though my wife is back to work with access to "real" insurance, my son and I continue with the NASE package serviced by MEGA Life and Health Insurance. The key ingredient of this package in my situation is that it qualifies as a high deductible plan as required by the Health Savings Account laws. As such, we can pay for small medical expenses with pre-tax money.

So back to the point...at my current Doctor's office, I keep getting calls everytime I make an appointment (which is fairly frequent, all things considered, because I'm extremely susceptible to lung infections) checking to see if I know that my insurance does not cover routine Doctor's visits. At this point, I just say "yes" and move on.

Unfortunately, the Doctor's office doesn't let it end there. When I arrived for an appointment last week, the person who checked me in at the desk asked if I had been called. I said "yes" again and said that it would be nice if the question wasn't always asked prior to an appointment. The attendant then said they could take my insurance off of my file so it wouldn't be an issue. I then politely informed her that I'm part of a group policy and that I receive a discount for Doctor's visits even though they are not covered under my plan.

At this point, we start running in circles. This happens almost everytime my son or I go to the Doctor.

The insanity here is that people are so conditioned to believe health insurance should cover everything. Even the Doctors' offices who see anything and everything in terms of insurance fail to understand a high deductible policy. Insurance is about protecting you from a catastrophic financial loss, not from a $120 trip to the Doctor to get treated for a sinus infection. How much would car insurance cost if you had a $10 copay for every oil change?