Health Insurance and You!

Frequent travelers, do you get nostalgic when thinking about free airline meals and checked-in luggage? In this tough economy, many doctors’ offices are trying an approach similar to the one that airlines and banks started taking a few years ago: charging small fees for services that used to be free.

Bob LaMendola of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel describes the trend in an article that appeared this past Sunday. Among the services that doctors have begun charging for are walk-in care, missing an appointment, getting a copy of your medical records, coordinating treatment with specialists, getting blood drawn, and filling out paperwork. Some patients, Mr. LaMendola writes, are getting annoyed by the fees.

But doctors – especially primary care physicians, whose incomes tend to be lower than those of specialists – are feeling squeezed by their reimbursement rates from private health insurance companies and public programs. Since primary care offices increasingly serve as patients’ medical homes, these doctors and their staffs end up bearing the brunt of those administrative duties. And they’re generally not reimbursed for them (although, as we blogged earlier this month, that is slowly changing. Whether that change will affect this one remains to be seen).

Luckily for patients, who may worry about ever-increasing fees, not all services are fair game for extra charges. For example, explains Mr. LaMendola, Medicare and insurance companies don’t allow doctors to add fees to services that are already covered. If they do, they may be dropped from the plan’s network and so could lose many of their patients.