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Meet your new doctor - Aetna
Filed Under (Links Around the Internet) by 
Cris Harshman on 15-01-2007
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Loading ...Cause of Death: Sloppy Doctors (from Time Magazine)
At first glance, this sounds like a great idea - offer incentives to doctors to start using an electronic prescription program, eRx Now, which “physicians can use to write prescriptions electronically, check for potentially harmful drug interactions and ensure that pharmacies provide appropriate medications and dosages.” Sounds great so far, right? Then I read the investing partners include insurance companies, and it starts to sound somewhat more nefarious.
Several months ago, my employer changed health insurance providers. One of small-print items was new to me - the insurance providers would constantly review my health records and prescriptions to review dosages and generic equivelants of medications prescribed. If the health insurance provider did not agree with the dosage or medication prescribed, a representative would call my doctor and ask for a dosage reduction or generic equivelant. In any case, the health insurance provider reserved the right to refuse payment based on their disagreement with dosage or non-generic prescriptions.
If I wanted to place my healthcare in the hands of a desk jockey, I’d save all my money and start self-diagnosing with Google and Wikipedia searches.
We pay doctors to diagnose illnesses and prescribe medications, and we pay pharmicists to oversee filling prescriptions. Why do we need another piece of technology that wrenches open the backdoor to health insurance providers practicing medicine without a license when we already have precautions built in?
With movements like this moving forward, soon you’ll be going to your local Aetna office for “medical advice”, and your doctor will be an iPhone.
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