Okay, let’s try this one again. All the whining that gets done about how these poor poor docs just CAN’T make a decent living anymore — All I did was point out the dollars that had to have been made by one of them to retire comfy after only 12 years’ practice, and do ANY of you respond to the point? No!

Notice! The point is: you can’t moan about how you can’t make a decent living when you can retire so young and so wealthy.

Notice! The point is NOT that there’s anything wrong with making money, y’all. Just don’t make a pile of it and then complain how you’re being taken to the cleaners every day and have to have special legislation passed that protects you from your mistakes. Whence this sense of entitlement?

No, not all docs whine, not all are rich, not all are afraid of their mistakes, but those who do — you know who you are.

As to your other comment, you say the physicians didn’t create it, but what are they doing to combat it? I see ample press releases, organized action, etc. on tort reform. I see nothing but acquiescence on the other issues you mention.

Of course, there is the occasional class action on reimbursement rates. The irony of that is always noted, of course.

You know, you don’t have to go into managed care. You could drop out. You just wouldn’t have the guaranteed pay.

You want to reduce the risks of lawsuits? Ignore your insurer and listen to the patients. They just want you to acknowledge them. Literally every med mal lawyer will tell you that the #1 complaint of every person who comes in to talk about a potential case is that they can’t get anyone to answer them.

Yet none of you talk about that solution. You’re so focused on trying to solve it in ways that have failed before.

The fact that you have no concept of payouts by insurers, how your insurer manages its money, how many cases would be affected by whatever version of “tort reform” you’re backing each day, the fact that you have no idea how much your insurer would have saved in the past, say, 5 years if that version had been in place, the fact that you have no idea how much of that would have been passed on to you.

You know, all the facts that one would normally need to reach the conclusion that capping damages for the weakest members of society will have any effect on whether you make $150K or $180K.

At least you don’t try to argue that tort reform is a societal benefit in terms of health care savings. I’ll give you that.

CJD

– Not that I disagree with the rest of your post, but this is not entirely truthful. The system that physicians work under is by NO means a “market” system. Market systems– even fettered ones like the rest of our capitalist society operates under– do not feature third party payors and other proxy mechanisms. Doctors are in no way being paid “what the market will bear” currently, because there is very little of the free market dynamic in modern medicine.

Is that a good salary? Yes.

Does that indicate they are being “overpaid”?

The term “overpaid” is meaningless unless you assume a socialist system a priori.

If you believe in capitalism, then people are worth whatever hte market will bear. Hence, baseball players make 10 million per year and doctors make 150k per year.

Deciding what jobs are “worth” is a slippery slope to deciding that everyone can live on 50k per year and creating a government that enforces flat wages across all industries.

– Physicians’ income represents anywhere from 3-10% of medical expenditures, depending on what source you choose to believe. By contrast, administrative costs represent between 25-40% of national expenditures.

You wanna know why health care costs are so high? Look no further than the bureaucratic and legal systems.

Besides which, your “argument”– if it can be called that– doesn’t even make intuitive sense. Physician incomes are at their lowest levels in decades (fact), yet health care costs have skyrocketed as doc incomes have plummeted. Doesn’t exactly suggest a causal relationship, now, does it? Know what else has skyrocketed during that time? Administrative costs are up over 550% since 1995. Managers, middle-managers, execs, paper-pushers, myriad billing and documentation requirements necessitated by our current managed care and legal paradigms.

So go ahead and feel free to admit your error at any time, though I won’t be holding my breath.