<— Part 1

There are two types of medical insurances: government and private. With government insurance such as Medi-cal and Medicaid it’s easier to get medication and equipment that you need. Don’t take this to mean that it’s easy, it’s just easier than private insurance. Because private insurances are for profit they have to think about money before health. This is the fundamental problem with for profit insurance companies.

The biggest for profit insurance company right now is Molina Healthcare. They have managed to finnagle their way into Medicaid and Medi-Cal. They sued the government in every single state and forced them to hand them the contract to those programs.

Molina is the company that has taken over my healthcare. They seem innocent enough. When you go to their website you’re confronted with the image of a smiling mother and child. However, not one week after being switched over to them, I’m already receiving phone calls asking for me to change my doctor. Of course, I told them no. They would like to switch everyone to their doctors and their pharmacies. There are two issues with that:

1. The doctors that I have right now are some of the very best in San Diego. I already have an established relationship with them and they know my needs. Changing doctors would mean starting over with someone that is already overworked and extremely stressed out. The quality of my care would inevitably go down until I built that relationship with the new doctors.
2. They just don’t care. The doctors that they want me to have just plain don’t care. It’s not because they’re bad people or anything like that, but they see so many patients a day that it’s impossible for them to care anymore. No human being has the capacity to see so many people and still give them the care that they need. There are exceptions, of course, but by and large this is true for most of the medical field.

When they switch people from one doctor to another they are, inevitably, lowering their quality of care, whether they want to admit it or not. Most people don’t have the time or energy to stop them from changing their doctors. They will do what they say because of some perceived notion that Molina has their best interest in mind or that it’s useless to resist because it’s going to happen anyway. The people at the top know this and use it to get what they want and that’s my core problem with Molina.

When you are entrusted with people’s health you need to make sure that that is your number one priority. The fact is that Molina doesn’t have health as its number one priority and that is something that eventually will get people killed.