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Doctors are not going to leave medicine. They are simply going to start charging cash. Many doctors have moved to this model and have stopped taking insurance altogether. Patient's pay doctors an annual fee of $1000-$2000. And to be honest, both patients and doctors have benefited.
Doctors get paid without having to fight with insurance companies. They get to spend as much time with their patients as possible without feeling rushed thus making it more enjoyable to practice medicine.
Patients get longer visits, and a more personal approach. They get to call their doctors when they want. They can get in to see their doctors whenever they want without having to wait for an appointment. They will often get house calls or visits if they are too sick to see their doctor in person.
In the past, it was rare that a patient would be willing to pay cash to see a doctor but now it's becoming more common because patients pay so much for insurance anyway so to pay an extra $1000 is not a lot when they consider they will get more personal service. After all, people are willing to pay an extra $1000 just to fly first class domestic so what's another $1000 to get a doctor at your beck and call.
Eventually, people are going to have to shell out $1000 per year to see their doctors because more docs are going to stop taking insurance. The Medicaid patients will be forced to going to the ER and seeing docs at hospitals or they will referred to docs who hire several mid-levels (PA's and Nurse Practioners) and just see high volume with visits lasting less than 5 minutes.
This is an argument I see frequently by the left. They use it with social security too. It is complete demagoguery. People who are in Medicare today cannot afford private insurance because they have been forced to pay the Medicare tax their whole working life instead of using that money to prepare for their health care needs in retirement. Your allusions to hypocrisy would have a modicum of validity if a their were a real choice for today's retirees, there isn't. There wealth had been confiscated for over 40 years of their working life to pay for Medicare and Social Security. Given the option to opt out and keep my money to take care of myself, I would do it in heart beat.
I'm sorry, doctors love to BS about how everything is going to be terrible, but the reality is, this isn't going to end up being a huge issue. It is a scare tactic.
Look where we got the whole "universal medicine is communism" thing. It originates from the AMA in the 40's- not because they actually thought universal medicine is akin of communism, but because they didn't want to give up any control of the profession.
A lot of individual doctor's a great people. But be realistic- it is a field where they can basically charge whatever they want and we have to pay it. (One of the biggest reasons why American's pay more for health care than any other country? Our system charges the most by far.) And that is not something many doctors, an especially not groups of doctors, are happy about.
Of course, that makes them sound like jerks, so they use scare tactics to get what they want out of the public.
Now, if you think doctors should be able to charge whatever the hell they want for their services, feel free to make that argument. But please, lets not makes this into something that it isn't.
At least doctors improve people's lives. A doctor can look in the mirror and say he or she made a difference.
Lawyers have destroyed this country. They have increased the cost of doing business by filing frivolous lawsuits which leads to more red tape in our society. They charge outrageous fees ($400 per hour) yet no one questions why they charge so much. They have increased the cost of medicine by forcing doctors to practice defensive medicine and ordering excessive tests and making excessive referrals to subspecialists to avoid a greedy lawyer from suing him or her.
I mean no one even dares question why these law firms charge whatever they want to essentially proof read a document yet we don't want to pay a doctor who has 5 times the cost of doing business than a lawyer yet sees a decrease in his or her income annually and has to do MORE work(see more patients, do mare paperworkd) to make the same or less income each year. Obama protected his lawyer buddies by not imposing any tort reforms and doing anything to curb the medical malpractice industry. It's pathetic that Obamacare did nothing to address tort reform.
Case in point, I'm a cardiologist. I would say that easily 1/3 to 1/2 of my patients are referrals from PCP's who are just trying to protect themselves from litigation meaning any patient that has any chest discomfort whatsoever will be referred to me because should something happen to one of these patients, that PCP's will be sued and have his or her career severely impacted. A guy that should have just been managed by a PCP is now being given an expensive stress test and a full cardiac evaluation thanks to lawyers. And the PCP makes no money referring a patient to me; the reason they refer out is to cover their a$#3
Last edited by azriverfan.; 10-28-2010 at 11:59 PM..
At least doctors improve people's lives. A doctor can look in the mirror and say he or she made a difference.
Lawyers have destroyed this country. They have increased the cost of doing business by filing frivolous lawsuits which leads to more red tape in our society. They charge outrageous fees ($400 per hour) yet no one questions why they charge so much. They have increased the cost of medicine by forcing doctors to practice defensive medicine and ordering excessive tests and making excessive referrals to subspecialists to avoid a greedy lawyer from suing him or her.
I mean no one even dares question why these law firms charge whatever they want to essentially proof read a document yet we don't want to pay a doctor who has 5 times the cost of doing business than a lawyer yet sees a decrease in his or her income annually and has to do MORE work(see more patients, do mare paperworkd) to make the same or less income each year. Obama protected his lawyer buddies by not imposing any tort reforms and doing anything to curb the medical malpractice industry. It's pathetic that Obamacare did nothing to address tort reform
You are not going to get an argument from me regarding lawyers. You are right about their fees and you are right about defensive medicine.
I can from my own experience of nearly 13 years of Medicare care. It is not funny, at all, how the bureaucrats in the stae capital treat doctors and remember that to treat Medicare people they have to agree to take what they can get from those bureaucrats.
So you're on government health care?
HAHAHAHA, doesn't that take the cake! Of course you are!!!!
I don't think many people here understand how vocational a medical degree is. Its entire point is to qualify you to be a doctor, and do that as well as possible. It is in-depth, not broad. Doctors deciding to change professions have a lot less flexibility than others with the same personal investment in education.
It is more analogous to an plumber deciding he doesn't want to be a plumber than someone with a doctorate in biology deciding he doesn't want to work in research any more.
Also, doctors often have larger loans after they graduate.
I'd also take some time to read up on what doctors said to the introduction of UHC in other countries, and how that actually turned out. And the introduction of UHC was a much bigger chhange. Which happened with the USA as an alternative, an immense market with a continual shortage of doctors, and massive profits for doctors.
Surprisingly, many of those countries now have more doctors working per head than the US. There never was an exodus. And unlike them, US doctors have no other country to go to where they can make bigger profits.
Not a moment too soon if they're all as unmotivated as this guy. See the last post in the OP's linked thread for a sensible answer to all "doctors" who'd rather trade stocks and flip foreclosures than do something unrewarding like help sick people.
She is talking about a particular subset of doctors who seemingly prefer to trade stocks.
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