My favorite patient story of the week.

A lovely patient looking for a new primary care doctor came to see me this week. Like most she was excited to have found me, via an internet search, looking for a family doctor who also addresses nutrition and weight loss.

She had previously contacted her health insurance company asking them for a referral to a doc who would be able to address nutrition and weight loss. The company promptly responded that “nutrition counseling and weight loss are not covered benefits”. They did not maintain a list of doctors who specialized in these areas and could not give her any recommendations.

Obviously, they didn’t help my patient, but seriously, do policies like these really save insurance companies money?

Yet another example demonstrating what makes for a broken healthcare system. Mr. health insurance CFO, call it the treatment of chronic metabolic disease, call it intense behavior counseling but please don’t turn away your insured who wish to address the root cause of chronic disease, nutrition!

I guess that’s why they call it “Sick Care” rather than “Health Care”. Want to save billions and trillions of healthcare dollars, let’s teach insurance companies how to appropriately fund programs that address disease prevention. That’s what I call effective healthcare reform!