I really dislike medical billing

I have to confess, I have been sent to collections once. It happened after my wife was in a motor vehicle accident. She went to the hospital by ambulance to get checked out because she had some back and neck pain. Afterwards, we got bills from the ambulance, ER physician, hospital, radiologist and lab (all separate). Somehow I lost track of one and a year later, I got a notice from a collections agency. Out of the 5 entities, 4 got the insurance info I had presented at registration in the ER but one did not. sigh.....

So recently, my son was born. Of course he has no existing insurance until he gets added. The pediatrician and obstetrician who did the circumcision accidentally billed it under me and my insurance ID which promptly got rejected by the insurance company. In order to correct it, I called the insurance company and the biller for each physician. Not my mistake but my mess to clean up. I hate that.

The problem is that billing is a pain for physicians to. I have to keep track of medicare guidelines that care about how many review of systems I ask patients about. So instead of saying to a patient, is there anything that is bothering you? Anything else? (like a normal person may), I have to say, do you have any fevers, loss of appetite, diarrhea, burning when you pee, chest pain, shortness of breath (ideally 2 points from 10 organ systems). The person is obligated to say, no, no, no, no, no, I would have said something, no, no, no. All this to be compliant and not be accused of medicare fraud.

Somehow the billing system works for neither patients nor physicians. Nothing in health care reform every addresses that.