How healthcare is rationed in the US: an example

Mark Kleiman tells the story of what happened when he was diagnosed with cancer:

That process took just about one full month, a month during which my chances of survival were dropping fairly steadily and the intensity — and therefore the side-effect profile — of the treatment that would be required if we ever got the damned thing figured out was rising in parallel. It would have taken longer — quite possibly fatally longer — if Al Carnesale, whom I’d known when we were both at the Kennedy School, and who by then was the Chancellor of UCLA and thus at some ethereal level responsible for both me and the hospital, hadn’t sent a note to the guy who runs the entire UCLA medical area (hospital and medical school). The note politely hinted that it would be at least marginally preferable if my department didn’t have to go through the hassle of recruiting a replacement. After that, things speeded up somewhat.

What absorbed that month? Mostly waiting.

After the chest X-ray, I needed to see an oncologist. I couldn’t make an appointment until I had the approval of the insurance company for the referral. That took a few days. Getting on the oncologist’s schedule took a few more days.

After the oncologist saw me, he wanted a bone marrow sample to send to the pathologists to figure out what the cancer might be. I couldn’t make an appointment for the bone marrow procedure until the insurance company approved it. Then I had to wait for the bone-marrow extractor to have time on his busy schedule.

When it turned out that there wasn’t enough marrow to test, I needed a lymph-node biopsy. More waiting for an insurance approval and more waiting for an appointment.

Having seen the head-and-neck surgeon who was going to do the biopsy, I couldn’t have the biopsy right away because the insurance company wouldn’t approve it as an in-patient procedure and there was queue for outpatient biopsy operating room time. Anyway, the guy who had seen me didn’t have any time free on his dance card for the next several weeks, so he sent me to another surgeon to actually do the procedure.

When I showed up for the outpatient biopsy, the anaesthesiologist took one look at my chart and flatly refused to put me under for the procedure except in an in-patient setting, on what seemed like the reasonable grounds that otherwise I could easily die on the table. That meant, of course, more waiting for another approval and another appointment.

All this, let’s recall, with the Chancellor breathing down the neck of the boss of the medical area on behalf of a full professor at the university that owns the hospital. So my experience with the system was probably about as good as it gets except for corporate executives using places like the Mayo Clinic or family members of people on the boards of directors of hospitals. (Apparently it’s generally understood that if you stump up enough in the way of contributions to get on the board of the hospital, you’re entitled to priority care; that’s how not-for-profit hospitals raise capital.)

Not that the Dutch system is perfect by a longshot, but this simply could not happen here. Once you need this kind of medical help, you’re going to get it and the insurance companies will pay out, as they’re obliged to do by law. Basic health care insurance is mandatory by law, provided by commercial insurers who however cannot refuse to insure you. At the moment we’re paying roughly 200 euros a month for the two of us to be insured, which includes some additional coverage; it could be cheaper, it could be more expensive. It’s an awkward, cumbersome system supposed to bring healthcare costs down by increased competitio, which hasn’t happened, but at the very least it leaves the majority of people free not to worry about their ability to pay for cancer treatments…