Here’s what you need to know.
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Here is what you really need to know. The government and our taxes aka “medicare” spent 70,000 a yr average per resident on your education yet you think you can just drop medicare? This does not even count the tax dollars going to med schools. You and your six figure salary should be ashamed.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/15/2/250.pdf
I also love the fact that most of you harp on having a “free market” except when it comes to any competition from alternative providers. All of a sudden the free market is thrown out the window and you are the only “safe” providers.
http://www.forhealthfreedom.org/Publications/Monopoly/TaxDollars.html
I welcome competition from alternative providers. I do not consider traditional medicine any safer than the average quack on the street, in most cases.
However.
It IS the most studied and understood area of “health care” (I don’t consider other modalities health care when they aren’t effective). Thus any and all risks incurred in Western medicine SHOULD be offset by the potential benefits (depending on the individuals making the decisions of course).
Plus, traditional/Western medicine has been “proven” (nothing can be proven but only supported by thousands upon thousands of data points and outcomes) to be effective for treating many diseases and disorders, among them HIV, cancer, diabetes, and traumas of all kinds.
Show me an alternative provider who can do that, and show me randomized double blind placebo controlled trial to go along with it, and I will reassess my opinions.
“You and your six figure salary should be ashamed.”
YOU are the one who should be ashamed, spouting nonsense about physician salaries. The average priamry care salary is UNDER six figures. The same can be said for pediatrics. Any cut in reimbursement will potentially force these practices to close, or to spend more time on cosmetic procedures than actual patient care. Take your head out of the sand and actually talk to your doctor about whats happening.
As physicians, we didn’t accept the tax dollars you speak of to finance our education unless we took loans for which we signed promissory notes. I didn’t ask Uncle Sam to give money to my school or my residency program. I have the right, as an American citizen, to accept or reject insurance plans, and to do what it takes (legally) to keep my business open, just like any other business would. If it means dropping insurances, so be it. YOU should be ashamed for trying to enslave me, and taking away my rights as a citizen. If Uncle Sam tells me by Congressional or Presidential fiat that I have to accept Medicare, I won’t.
Anonymous 11:32, you are clueless.
Medicare/HHS supports medical training institutions, for which it receives a lot of low cost but highly-trained labor from residents and interns. Remember, even though these people have not graduated residency training, they have their doctorate degrees and generally several years of intensive experience as hospital physicians. For the government, it is a bargain.
For doctors, working in a residency program is not an option; if you want to practice medicine anywhere, you have to be board eligible, and residency is the only way to get there. Residency training is by a yearly contract. There is no downstream obligation to the trainee to accept Medicare patients when finished with residency; there is no expected moral or required legal obligation to do so, nor is there any compelling argument for making any such requirement. The government is already getting a pretty good deal, and they know it.
I can’t think why earning a salary, or just pay when no “salary” is guaranteed, should confer a right by the government or anyone else to feel entitled to take work of someone else without payment, or for less than the fair value of that work. All that is is confiscation. You, Anon 11:32, seem to want to dress it up as some entitlement on moral grounds. Sorry, but you don’t convince. All you seem to want is the right to take what you just don’t want to pay for. That makes you a wishful thief, but little more.
“Here is what you really need to know. The government and our taxes aka “‘medicare” spent 70,000 a yr average per resident on your education yet you think you can just drop medicare? This does not even count the tax dollars going to med schools.”
Here is what you need to know. Each resident per year returned that and more in each year of their residency indentured servitude. Or for example, the fact that each ER doctor on average provides greater than $100K in uncompensated care with other specialties lesser, but still significan amounts.
Want to make us all a public service entity such as police, fire, school teachers? Fine. Then don’t be surprised if doctors want vacation time, sick leave, overtime pay beyond 40hrs, pension, healthcare, disability etc…..
how about retiring after 20 yrs with full pension & frequent extra payments justified for “disabilities” acquired on the job.
if you want doctors to become like every other gov’t employee sucking resources from those that actually produce something, then fine, make them “public” entities. Then see what kind of quality you’ll get (e.g. VA hospitals)
Hey anon 11:32 PM here’s a quarter. Payback for what the government spent on your education.
I’d like fries with that.
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