First Opinion is STAT’s platform for fascinating, illuminating, and provocative articles concerning the life sciences writ giant, written by biotech insiders, well being care staff, researchers, and others.
To encourage strong, good-faith dialogue about points raised in First Opinion essays, STAT publishes chosen Letters to the Editor acquired in response to them. You may submit a Letter to the Editor right here, or discover the submission kind on the finish of any First Opinion essay.
The story
“Insurance coverage firms like United Healthcare should not the one ones guilty for a damaged system,” by Elliott S. Fisher
The response
In U.S. well being care, physicians receives a commission a “negotiated” price with any of the industrial insurance coverage firms. Nonetheless, most small-practice physicians can by no means speak to anybody in these insurance coverage firms and due to this fact get a base low price. The price of working a small workplace most often is above what’s being compensated for lots of those visits. On the opposite facet, bigger corporate- and hospital-owned places of work have company negotiators with contacts in insurance coverage firms and negotiate contracts, which pay as much as 10 instances greater for a similar service! What does this do? Small doctor places of work turn out to be smaller, minimize workers, and shortly the doctor retires. Does everybody see how lengthy it takes to get a medical appointment? What does this do to the price of U.S. well being care? Solely the costliest and least environment friendly company places of work survive. Upside-down capitalism! A easy resolution to stage the enjoying discipline: make the cost price for any CPT code solely range by 20% for a county.
— Sandeep Gupta
The story
“Pediatrics is changing into drugs’s largest skeleton crew,” by Jared E. Boyce and Religion Crittenden
The response
The vast majority of kids that I serve are Medicaid recipients (greater than 90% of my clinic, actually), and I agree with the entire causes acknowledged concerning why college students don’t need to go in to pediatrics. Apart from the shortage of affordable pay, mountains of paperwork, and the revolving door of sufferers, I feel we should additionally tackle that oftentimes in rural areas, there is just one pediatrician, and they’re answerable for the entire care {that a} little one wants: emotional, behavioral, psychological, and bodily. It’s a very giant burden to hold and eventually, we’ve to put it down for the sake of our personal well-being.
— Dr. Williams
The story
“Psychological well being apps want a whole redesign,” by Benjamin Kaveladze
The response
It is a sensible, and welcome, contribution to the sphere; a concentrate on person expertise, behavioral economics, and ideation on interventions/actions to progress efficacy in these with lived expertise is worth it and related to contemplate. As well as, it might even be useful to reimagine the issue for which psychological well being apps purport to be the answer. For too lengthy, these funding and creating such applied sciences have restricted their pondering to extending ahead the in-person scientific fashions of psychology and psychiatry which were dominant for the previous century, with reasonable success. Maybe by imagining the world because it really is in the present day and constructing digital psychological well being options to resolve the precise issues of these with lived expertise in the actual world, coupled with the redesign the creator requires, we might see actual enchancment, and influence, on this necessary house.
— Matt Lewis, LLMental
