Dr. Joshua John-Ram Schacter argues that traditional insurance-based healthcare traps providers and patients on a "hamster wheel": episodic care, declining per-unit reimbursement, and insurance-driven treatment decisions force ever-higher volumes and reduce care completeness. Patients, he says, are already searching for and pursuing non-traditional, insurance-independent treatment options as a way to escape the system.
They're telling us that they are interested in options that are outside of what we would consider as traditional insurance based health care. The problem in healthcare today as I see it, you know, insurance companies dictate our care. We have episodic care, which is the norm. Reimbursement per unit is constantly decreasing which increases our need for more and more patients and decreases our ability to take care of those patients completely. This creates kind of a hamster wheel for patients and providers. It sticks us into this system where we're constantly chasing this ever decreasing amount of money that doesn't even keep up with inflation. And so how do we get off this hamster wheel? Well, patients are telling us how we can get off the hamster wheel. They're telling us that they are interested in options that are outside of what we would consider as traditional insurance based health care. They're doing searches themselves and going to find treatments outside of what would be considered normal and traditional.
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