Change of pace. It’s soapbox time. The level of disrespect for customers in monopolistic industries is out of hand—it is causing inflated prices, poor product quality and wasted money for the service providers because of their own inflated costs.
Most of us can agree that airlines abuse their customers. It seems that every week there is some story about passengers being stuck on runways, crammed into seats, charged new fees. Small seats? Baggage fees? Fee for carry-on luggage?
Mind you, I never begrudge a company its efforts to cut costs and increase revenue. But it seems that airlines have been given a free pass because, despite the price and the abuse, people are still flying. Virtually every flight I have been on in the past year is either full or near full. Airlines continue to collude, agreeing on their usurious practices, because they know there is nowhere else for customers to go. That’s what happens when there is high demand and little competition.
Then there’s Whole Foods, the natural-products grocery store that assumes that it is the only natural option around—why else would its prices have been so high and service so poor for all these years? I am one of the very few who doesn’t love Whole Foods. Why? Because when I get charged premium pricing, I expect premium service. Sadly, the service I have received at Whole Foods is the same, if not worse, than what I get at most chain grocery stores—and the staff is made up of unenthusiastic, undertrained individuals. Like the airlines, when you assume that you own the marketplace, you don’t need to provide quality service or low prices. Of course, many people now are applauding the lower prices at Whole Foods since Amazon bought the chain, but I have chosen not to go there since then. The lowered prices just confirmed how incredibly high the prices were before the acquisition when Whole Foods presumed its supremacy in the natural-foods marketplace.
That leads me to health care. I received a letter from my insurance company last week declining my appeal for a lab payment. I didn’t recognize the appeal or the lab, so I called to find out what the test was for and which doctor prescribed it. I was concerned that someone had fraudulently submitted a claim in my name. You would think this would be a straightforward piece of information once I gave the customer service associate the claim number, right? Wrong. I spent nearly a half-hour on the phone and was put on hold twice. Then the very polite, well-intentioned service rep promised to get back to me with the information—but she did not. So I called again the next day and eventually was given the answer after another 15 minutes on the phone.
It occurs to me that this is, in part, why we suffer with poor health care. Insurance companies have no incentive to improve customer service or their infrastructure. Why should they? We have nowhere else to go. Is the software that these companies use so bad that it took 45 minutes for the service rep to find the most basic of information about a claim? What would have happened if this was a claim for major surgery or an inpatient experience that required assorted tests and specialists? The insurance and health-care industries have become so complicated that no one can keep track of costs or expenses, leading to bloated, inefficient processing. Add to that the fact that there is no consistent price sheet—every insurance company cuts its own deals with each practitioner, lab and drug company.
My husband went to an out-of-network doctor a few weeks ago. At the end of his appointment, he told the receptionist that he would be paying directly and asked what the price would be. The receptionist asked if he had insurance. He said yes, but the provider was not in network. Well, that didn’t matter—the price for people with insurance was one fee…but the price for people with no insurance at all is substantially lower. Huh??
The health-care and health insurance industries have little incentive to improve their processes or service. We all are locked in with no way out. Interestingly, the same doesn’t hold true for auto or homeowner’s insurance. Auto insurance companies trip over themselves with discounts and service improvements. Yet we suffer through the health-care system because we have no other choices.
Here’s an idea. Eliminate health insurance, and allow individuals to pay providers directly for their services. Employers can provide their employees an allowance comparable to the insurance fees being charged now so that the employees continue to get support for their health expenses. The health-care funds from the employers would be put into health savings accounts so that individuals can’t use the money to buy televisions or take vacations. This would cut out the insane layers of middleman expenses that drive up health-care costs. With the pressure of competition, prices for drugs and doctors and lab tests would go down. (As for those people with unlucky genes, we can create a pool of funds to help them pay their expenses. When you strip away illnesses caused by lifestyle choices, the number of people who truly drew an unlucky hand is tiny compared with the masses of relatively healthy people.)
There certainly are many complicated details to this concept, but it bears consideration. Health-care costs have skyrocketed since the inception of “managed care” in the early 1970s, when our choices were reduced and everyone was forced into a monopolistic system.
At Bottom Line, the pressures on the information and print industries have forced us to rethink and restructure every part of how we do business. We have saved significant amounts of money along the way while continuing to improve our products and service for our customers. Why should health care—or any monopoly—be immune from the same responsibilities?
Somehow, some way, customer service and appropriate pricing must return to our way of life.
