Recently, I received a desperate call from a woman with schizoaffective disorder, an illness in the gray zone between schizophrenia and bipolar mood disorder. Several months earlier, her health insurance company had declined to cover her antidepressant in the double dosage that had pulled her out of suicidal depths. After that initial denial, both she and I were told that under no circumstances would the higher dosage be allowed. The fact that she was insured meant that she was ineligible for humanitarian programs that provide free medication. She felt she had no choice but to lower the dosage, and after she did, her mood plummeted.
At the time of her call to me, she had been on a lower dose of the antidepressant for several months and was on the fence between suicide and hospitalization. She recognized that the higher dose would help and asked me to call the company again that manages her prescription benefits, which I did. After the usual automated voice adventure, the company faxed a form for me to fill out. It asked whether she had generalized anxiety disorder (no), major depressive disorder (no, but she met symptom criteria), other (yes, schizoaffective disorder); whether she had failed on therapy for a minimum of 2 months (yes); and whether she had previously achieved remission on the drug (yes, remission of depression on double the dose). I explained that without a higher dosage of the antidepressant she was at risk for suicide and would require emergency hospitalization, which might otherwise be avoided. I faxed back the form and within the hour received a denial letter stating that the patient had been sent a letter telling her that she would not be allowed the higher dose.
I called the medication-benefit company and pleaded with a reviewer, who told me that his company had no discretion in the matter: If the patient didn’t have generalized anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder, she couldn’t have the higher dose. I explained that my patient did have major depression but that her major depression did not meet criteria for major depressive disorder. The reviewer told me that it was not sufficient to say that my patient had major depression. She had to have major depressive disorder. I could appeal in writing to her health insurance company and would receive a decision within 90 days. Or I could say she has major depressive disorder. I chose the latter and rationalized that some other psychiatrist might have given her the diagnosis of major depression with psychotic features. In order to correct any falsehood, I wrote an appeal letter explaining my actions. The patient received her authorization. The process of communicating with the patient and the insurance representatives took several hours out of a day on which I turned down 2 new patients, both of whom were seeking urgent evaluation.
This incident took place in 2009, but my first experience with managed care fracturing the physician-patient bond came in 1986, when I saw a young woman for a consultation the week after she was raped, and her insurance company (ironically founded by doctors) declined to authorize further visits. None of my frustrations about the process are new, and I have “opted out” of managed care plans. I understand that the insurance company for the woman who was raped made its profits primarily by reducing services for psychiatric illness. That takes us back to economics.
I listen to economists and politicians speak about the need to stimulate spending. In the same breath, they speak about the need to reduce health care spending. It seems to me that as a society matures, it should spend a greater proportion of gross domestic product on health care. This is exactly what is happening, but as our country makes its way through a trial-and-error adjustment, many are having difficulty paying for their health care. Consequently, we are worried about rising health care costs. But to reduce health care spending should not be a primary goal. The goal should be for the population to be healthy and for the health care economy to be vigorous with balanced supply and demand. There is no good reason to exclude health care from the marketplace.
Managed care has not helped. By inserting itself between the patient and the physician, it has not only frustrated the patient, who still needs care, but has also reduced the physician’s ability and motivation to adjust treatment and costs to the patient’s ability to pay. Ask any physician who has practiced since the 1970s. If anything, we have more employees spending less time with patients. Many practices have 6 employees for every doctor. Nurses, doctors, and direct care workers spend increasingly more time pushing paper, wending their way through voice-mail mazes, and tapping computer keyboards. A study in the March 2008 edition of Academic Medicine reported that physicians-to-be scored progressively lower on tests for empathy each year they spent in medical school.1 The pharmaceutical companies have studied what happens when we spend time with their sales representatives: we prescribe their medications. Physicians really do want to help, but we’re suckers for interpersonal forces, which is usually why we go into medicine in the first place.
