Horrific service from Government run health insurance
This is the third item in a series of missives on our experience on government run health insurance programs.
As a non-profit 501c3 the Foundation for Health Coverage Education "Coverageforall.org" has helped over 2,000,000 Ameicans discover the plans for which they are eligible. As a part of our ongoing investigation into how effective MediCal is, we did a phone study to determine the dificulty of signing up for this free program.
After interviewing over 4,000 uninsured patients from four hospitals over a two month period who entered through the emergency room, we found that 22% were eligible for MediCal.
Next we wanted to see if the process for signing up before the patient entered the emergency was effective. We called the MediCal office 50 times during business hours over a two week period. Here are the results: 35 times out of 50 they simply did not answer the phone. There was a recording saying they were not capable of answering and the caller had no opportunity to leave a message. 15 times they answered the phone with an average time on hold of 22 minutes, and the longest hold time being 48 minutes. Of course these are unacceptable service levels. In fact, the government is responsible for most of the truly uninsured, it passed health care reform to protect. This is the same program that the Health Reform legislation is attempting to add another 11,000,000 people.
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May '10
Re: Horrific service from Government run health insurance
Take heart, Phil. The eminent economist Paul Krugman explains:
"In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false."
See? There's nothing to worry about!
(Readers of James Taranto's Best of the Web Today will recognize this!)
May '10
Re: Horrific service from Government run health insurance
"Thank you for your patience. Your call is important to us. The current estimated wait time to speak to a representative is ... three ... hundred ... fifty ... six ... years."