1) SreyRam Kuy: “As the recent Democratic presidential debate in Austin, Texas, highlighted, the healthcare issues that top Americans’ minds are not dwindling doctors’ payments or loss of physician prestige. It is access to quality healthcare.”
My take: Dr. Kuy doesn’t get it. Physician payment is intertwined with access to healthcare. The public may have little sympathy for “rich” doctors facing decreased payments. However, any Medicare cuts will lead to decreased access, as physicians will stop accepting Medicare patients in response.
When the debate is re-framed as such, patients are forced to care about any threats to physician payment.
2) The “new generation” of physicians are opting for more work-life balance.
My take: As it should be. These days, new physicians view medicine more like a job than a calling. It is apparent that politicians ([cough]Pete Stark[cough]) and the public have decreasing respect for the profession. In addition, the constant siege by the lawyers is taking its toll, as malpractice woes are driving more doctors out of medicine altogether.
In such hostile times, why should doctors sacrifice more to the profession than they already have?
3) Ads are popping up urging the public to “demand a CT scan” for lung cancer screening.
My take: Want to curb health care costs? You put an immediate end to campaigns like this.
Imploring the general public to obtain evidence-bereft CT scans foolishly feeds in the “more medicine must be better medicine” myth.
It is especially shameful that the physicians behind the ad – radiologists, pulmonologists and thoracic surgeons – stand to benefit financially from the indiscriminate use lung cancer screening.
