The height of hypocrisy among comments on this blog.

Absolutely, if you didn’t take insurance I’d either have to pay out of pocket, find a doctor who takes my insurance, go to witch doctors, die, whatever. So if you don’t want to take insurance – don’t. If you loose your patients as a result and go out of business – it is your problem. You take or don’t take medicare based on what is convenient for you at this moment. You also have a professional organization who can lobby on your behalf. Don’t like your job – find another one. Go into IT where the risk of law suits are virtually non-existent and see if it makes the job stress-free.

Do you have a right to complain? Sure. Most of us complain about our jobs, about how bad business means no raises for us but a 20% raise for a CEO. Just don’t talk about other professions as if you know anything about them.

You are also free to get your care from a naturopath, spiritual healer, shaman, or medium… oh, wait a minute – you would never want to pay their non-government controlled, non-insurance payable rates, now would you?

Every profession has its pros and cons. While it is true that most of us non-doctors don’t know a thing about your problems, you don’t have a clue about other fields. Like when you say that other people are paid by the hour (hello? most white-color workers aren’t) or are guaranteed the inflation-based increases (only unionized workers are guaranteed anything) or get overtime pay (most professionals on a yearly salary don’t).

If you don’t like it, you could do something else. You could do research, for example. Less money but less stress too; or maybe a different kind of stress. Freedom of choice.

Just about every insurer ties their rates to medicare. The only “choice” today is to try to go concierge (not much of a choice).

When I was able to make a real “choice” this was not the case. There were no HMOs nor managed care plans, etc.

Don’t make a conscious choice and then expect everyone to feel bad for you.

How do you feel about abortion?

When was the last time a target supervisor made $200K a year? With great reward comes great responsibility.

Don’t make a conscious choice and then expect everyone to feel bad for you.

When was the last time the Target supervisor had thirty customers in one day insist that he break the law and every ethical code so that his illness would qualify for FMLA or state disability?

When was the last time the Target supervisor had to inform someone that their family member was dead, or a patient that his time was near?

When was the last time the Target supervisor was out 20K (out of pocket) to ensure that their liability carrier was doing right by him?

When was the last time the Target supervisor decided to forgo his pay so that he could meet the payroll for his employees?

When was the last time the people who pay the Target supervisors paycheck decided that they had paid him too much and demanded a refund for overpayment over the last three years?

It’s ok. You non-physicians are allowed to ignore the FACTS that are part of a physicians daily existence, as long as it furthers your argument, complaint, etc. Which begs one question: If doctors discussing (whining in your parlance) medical care, health care policy, and so forth bothers you so much, why do you read KevinMD (or other medical blogs)?

Despite your onerous overhead, malpractice, etc. you doctors all manage to pay dues to your professional associations, which work and lobby to your benefit. Walmart employees, on the other hand, cannot organize and fight for their rights.

There was no guarantee with your medical degree that you’d be able to cash in off the pain and suffering of others (I apologize, providing care). So welcome to the economy the rest of us live in, where going to college and getting a degree now means you can be a supervisor instead of a cashier when you end up having to work at Target.

Of course, you’ll also be working long hours, sometime weekends just to meet insane schedules, not getting paid for extra hours at all (most high skilled white color workers are “exempt” from overtime pay in case you don’t know), worry every year about evaluations, worry about your company’s earnings – “below expectations” often translates to no raises and sometimes translates into layoffs. Unhappy? No worry, there are some folks in India and China who are just as good as you are can do your work for a fraction of your salary. If you are lucky you can get 2-4% increase a year raises, if you are not lucky you can go for a couple of years with no raises at all. Who cares about inflation if there are people in other countries who can do your job for $500 a month.

But look on the bright side. Nobody will ever sue you for malpractice. There may be other types of stress – when you cannot figure out why some little thing doesn’t work and the deadline was yesterday.

Forgetting CS, you could probably change jobs without changing fields. How about just going into research? You have an MD, you could probably get a PhD and just do research. For some reason, most of you choose an MD over MD-PhD, was it only because you wanted to help people?

Now if you want to change your mind and become a factory worker, go to Protor and Gamble. After a few years you can make almost 100k yearly. You will get alot of respect, and after 20 years you should have just about a million dollars in profit sharing.