From the folks that brought you the credit score system in all it’s glory, here’s MedFICO! It’s a new business project underway with the goal of assessing patient’s ability to pay their medical bills. The system would gather patient’s bill payment history from hospitals around the country and then assign patients a score similar to a credit score. Critics are worried if the same problems with people getting erroneous information in their credit report and then having an insanely difficult time cleaning it up would also affect MedFICO. They also worry whether hospitals would use MedFICO to determine the level of care offered, like whether the person gets a hospital stay or not. FICO scores are now being used by some employers to screen out potential employees, would they use MedFICO to see who might take a bigger chunk out of the health benefits?
The Doctor Will See Your Credit Now [The Red Tape Chronicles]
Medical industry plans to rate payment history [Chicago Tribune]
(Photo: yosoyjulito)
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@misstic: No, I didn’t miss the point of your post. I simply disagreed with it. I’m sorry, but I don’t see how this mirrors Universal Healthcare in the least. This Fico business isn’t about managing finite resources, but about further maximizing profits. UHC isn’t profit driven. They are completely different systems, neither of which have finite resources. Our current system has finite resources and also has the added concern of profits because they’re beholden to shareholders, which is why we’re left with millions of uninsured.
This story doesn’t point out that UHC would be a bad idea, it highlights why it is absolutely vital we adopt our own version as soon as possible. If we continue with what we have, they’ll just keep throwing out more schemes at us, like this new Fico, to further deepen their own pockets. The longer we stick with it, the worse things get. The countries with UHC certainly aren’t perfect. Nothing can be absolutely perfect. But they’re still much, much better than what we have. We could adopt the absolute worst example of UHC out there and still come out way ahead.
@misstic: Also wanted to add this: it scares you that people want to turn health care over to the government? Well, it scares me to think that there are people that want to keep letting corporations make our health care decisions for us. It scares me to think that even with this horrendous story about MedFico that there will still be people who want to cling to this horribly inefficient, profit driven system. What evidence besides your own mistrust of the government do you have that shows that our government can’t do what just about every other free country does? That they couldn’t do it even better? We have the advantage of having sat on our butts while every other country got with the program, so we can see their mistakes, and improve on what they did well. There’s no reason we couldn’t do it. And we don’t really have a choice, because sticking with private health care is already failing us all miserably and has been for years. This Fico scam is only more evidence of that. I’m sorry, but the argument has to be better than “I’m afraid of our government!”
Is it time for the Revolution yet?
This also reminds me of that Discovery channel program that came on a while back about future technology (something about the year 2050 or some jazz like that). During the medical part some guy injured himself and he didn’t have “platinum coverage” with his insurance so they wouldn’t do the operating he needed.
Everyone likes picking on the NHS but 90% of British expats I’ve spoken to all say some variation of, “Until I got here I didn’t know how good I had it back home.”
@Pithlit: couldn’t have said it better myself.
Disturbing material. Wonder at what age you start getting scored… Imagine a premature infant in the NICU not receiving vital care because of the parents bad scores, or just the mere fact that he/she was born early.
makes me happy i live in canada
1. Socialized medicine will not make things better. See also: the UK’s NHS sucks. A lot.
2. While a MedFICO scheme is one of the DUMBEST things I’ve ever heard of, it is the unfortunate result of people like a co-worker of my husband who is living with his non-working illegal immigrant girlfriend who has constant medical issues. To get around paying for service or registering with a doctor’s office (which might be alerted by the fact that she doesn’t have any kind of identification what so ever) they go to hospital ERs, use her real name but phony address and other details, and then never worry about paying the bills because she has no social security number — or any other identifying information for them to collect upon. I’ve said to my husband on numerous occasions that, next time I have to pay out of pocket for some ridiculously expensive procedure not covered by our insurance, I’ll make sure and thank his co-worker with a boot up the ass.
Also, I once dated a guy who did this sort of thing as well — he wasn’t in the country illegally or anything, he just wanted to screw with “the man” and thought that by dodging his bills, he could help force socialized medicine to become a reality in the US. True story.
@Pithlit: The government who’s f’d up our children’s educations with No Child Left Behind? Who haven’t been fiscally solvent in recent memory? Who mange to bungle, mishandle, or otherwise screw up every single measure they come up with because of partisan politics which state that, regardless of what you believe is best for your constituents, you have to simply vote the opposite of the other party’s line? A government that is, for lack of a better term, full of fail? You really want to trust these morons with your health care? Really? Wow. I’m scared of you.
PS: True stories about the NHS:
1. The father of a friend of my husband went into an NHS hospital with a cut on his hand, for stitches. He was tested for other conditions or infections and found to be negative. Upon release for the hospital, he got sick — turns out, he contracted MRSA in the hospital.
2. My husband had to wait six months for a procedure that he could have had in a few weeks if he had private insurance.
3. It took me three months to get to an OB/GYN because of the lack of NHS-run clinics in the area and the small number of staff due to government budget cutbacks. Luckily, I wasn’t pregnant, but had I been, imagine waiting three months from when you find out you’re pregnant for your first visit/check up.
Good points: free medicine. Free health care. Too bad you can die from waiting for it, or die from receiving it.
@joellevand: Well, here in America, you can die because you never had a crack at it at all. You’re not even on any sort of list. You simply have no chance. You mentioned the three month wait for an OB/GYN? That’s happening for many women in the US, too. Only we get the added benefit of having to pay for it as well.
For every “My brother’s sister’s best friend’s cousin died waiting for xyz procedure story I hear, I hear many more “I had to have a life saving procedure and wasn’t charge a dime” story. UHC may not be perfect, but every single person I’ve ever personally known and talked to would still take it a million times over what we have in the US. They usually say things like “We feel so sorry for you” too. So, I’m still going with the push for UHC.
@joellevand: You’re right, because the government hasn’t kept the country free from foreign invasion for 200 years, hasn’t cleaned up our environment, hasn’t insured that your water is drinkable, hasn’t insured that your air is breathable, that the vast majority of students in Ivy League schools come from public schools, that the internet was created, that a man was put on the moon, that the Ohio river no longer catches on fire, and on, and on, and on…
The idea that the government can do nothing is laughably simplistic. The idea that a government can’t handle healthcare is put to the lie every single day in almost every other industrialized country in the world. For healthcare we spend far more and get worse results than every other firt world country in the world, and even some 3rd world countries. So, yes, I think the government is perfectly capable of hanadling healthcare. The idea that you would entrust healthcare to a market is terrifying. You are putting your health and the health of everyone you know in the hands of people who’s only incentive is to make money. The easiest way to make money as a health insurer is to kill people. Now, I know that’s not the polite term for it. They prefer terms like “expiremental” and “prexisting conditions”, and “not standard for your market”. But, in the end it is more profitiable for them to deny coverage than to keep you alive. There is nothing you can do about it. It is inherent in the market. At least with our governmet, we have a say.
There is no perfect solution. But I’ll put my faith in some government bureaucrat who’s boss is afraid I’ll vote his ass out over some insurance company bureaucrat who’s afraid his boss is going to fire him if he can’t show a 25% profit this quarter. Markets are fine for things like widgets and Coca Cola. But for important stuff? I’ll trust democracy, thank you very much.
@joellevand:
NHS is a universal health plan + the NHS doesn’t work very well = universal health plans are bad?
All your anecdotes demonstrate is that if you want to run an effective national health system; don’t do it like the UK. Instead, why not look to Canada, France, or Germany, who have very well-regarded systems? I don’t know many French or Germans, but of the Canucks I know I have yet to meet one who would trade their system for the US’s.
@Pithlit: Well put. Your comments on this thread are excellent.
I would add that in the US private insurance is no guarantee of prompt and competent care. As for MRSA, major hospitals throughout the US are dealing with this as well. So, it’s presence in the UK doesn’t say much.
Regarding waiting periods: It’s commonplace for Americans in typical PPO or managed care plans to wait weeks or months for elective procedures. Personally, I once tried to schedule an appointment with my GP and was told their earliest opening was in 6 weeks. That’s what a $400 monthly premium and a $25 office visit copay will get you in the US, if you’re lucky enough to be insured.
@jiminychristmas: It’s why I’m puzzled that there are people are still so supportive of it. I don’t know why the vast majority of people aren’t ready to chuck it, and I have better than average health insurance. I do think more and more people are getting fed up, which is why I think we’ll eventually move toward a UHC, even though it will be an uphill battle all the way. It’s also comforting that in this thread, no one seems to be supporting this gawdawful Fico scam, no matter what side of the debate they’re on. And, thank you for the complement.
Lovely… Let’s keep on finding ways to screw the end users (victims) of the current US healthcare system rather than attacking the actual problems (administrative overhead).
this blows.
@joellevand: that still beats the policy i don’t have.
Having a good health insurance policy is becoming a luxury in the states.
What you meant to say was “having a health insurance policy is becoming a luxury in the states”.
This is such an awful, awful idea that I am having extreme difficulty in believing its reality. Honestly. A direct system of ranking care priority by payment capacity? What. The. Fuck. No. No, no, no. I hope fellow Consumerist readers will be joining me in the belltower when that happens.