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There is one very important group to the vitality and viability of the US healthcare system who has been largely ignored. Physicians are fearing the onset of Obamacare, with many of them believing they won't be able to make enough money to remain in practice.
Also think about the debt doctors take on when going to medical school. With low payments, high medical school debt, high malpractice insurance, high taxation long stressful hours it may not be worth going to medical school.
I didn`t realize physicians were that easy to scare. Oh the humanity!
What does it matter what I do for a living. I go to the doctor just like everyone else. Please tell me why I have to pay over $100 for a visit just to tell me my blood work came out fine. They could have told me that over the phone. I'm not a know it all, I am just telling you my experience.
I have formed a relationship with my doctor.....I get my results over the phone...always have.
As far as $100 for a visit, that's crap.
Even with my "Cadillac health insurance", my doctor only gets $45 for a visit, including co-pay. He gets $30 for a Medicare patient (that's why he may stop seeing Medicare patients) and he doesn't accept Medicaid. It costs more to do the paperwork than he earns.
He still doesn't know what his reimbursement will be under obamacare. Most still don't.
Anyway, here's a story.
A bar owner had a refrigerator that stopped working, so he called in a handyman. The handyman looked over the machine, then bumped a certain spot with his fist....the refrigerator started working like new again. The bar owner asked how much and the handyman said $50. The bar owner said WTF.....you only bumped it with your hand! The handyman said, I knew where to bump it!
I suspect some of them might go blackmarket, cash only, no sign on the window, just blackout window film. Heck this might even be a good thing, they may start making house calls again. Some of the smart ones were doing this already, but they get tracked down and shut down and pick it up and do it all over again.
LOL..paying with money is now considered "black market" ?
I've paid cash and got a discount because of it since they don't have to deal with insurance and the long payback times.
Insurance has become such a complicated mess that most doctors, dentists, etc. have to hire full time people just to deal with insurance processes.
Once upon a time you were responsible to get reimbursed by your insurance. You paid the doctor and then submitted your claim yourself to get reimbursed.
That's how reasonable costs were. And doctor visits were not reimbursable either.
There is one very important group to the vitality and viability of the US healthcare system who has been largely ignored. Physicians are fearing the onset of Obamacare, with many of them believing they won't be able to make enough money to remain in practice.
Also think about the debt doctors take on when going to medical school. With low payments, high medical school debt, high malpractice insurance, high taxation long stressful hours it may not be worth going to medical school.
This has been mentioned before, but garners little attention, and the Leftist Obama operatives who keep pushing ObamaCare either ridicule any such suggestion, or quietly egnore it. They will not debate it.
With the ACA, more and more physician groups and practices have "sold out" to hospitals or corporations that run medical practices.
The irony of all this is the law prohibits physician groups from forming mega practices that have "monopoly" of a certain region. Insurance companies will complain and call the merger illegal and the government will agree. Cause doctors will have too much bargaining power.
But if the same physician super groups all merge under the same hospital system as hospital employees. And now the hospital or super corporation runs the practices. Than that not illegal.
The same hospital system now has the upper hand negotiating prices with insurance and can demand pretty much whatever they want cause they own most of the physician practices.
This drives up health care costs by creating only 1-2 players in the game when there used to be 4-5 players.
With what doctors charge for a 5 minute office visit they will remain in practice.
The type of people that become doctors can be anything they want to be and if you want to attract intelligent people to the profession the pay scale needs to match their intelligence. When someone is making their career choice and is faced with 12 years of hell there has to be a big payoff in the end or many of them are going to choose something else.
I don't really feel sorry for doctors. Plenty of professions have gone through dramatic changes in recent years, resulting in longer hours, lower pay and less job stability. Physicians have far less to worry about than many other professionals
With what doctors charge for a 5 minute office visit they will remain in practice. I do think that their enormous debt for medical school should be paid for though. This country is lacking doctors because of the high cost of medical school.
Paid for by whom?
Here we go again with another leftist suggesting that doctors make too much money.
Leftist thinking is "collectivist." They would deny the right of anyone to earn what their skill and knowledge entitles them to. They think that healthcare is a "right," just as they feel entitled to many other things which depend upon somebody else providing it.
No one should be required to provide service to another for free, or for less than the market value of that service.
A doctor spends years learning medicine, becoming a surgen, etc., while others his age are already earning an income. Medical school is expensive, and his insurance is costly. His knowledge and skill has value that cannot be measured in dollars and cents.
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