Limiting Medicare patients

Nice. A gynecologist in an academic program decides to cherry-pick the easier “25-year old pill refills” or “16-year old STI check” (both of whom, it would seem, could get the services they need from a primary care doc) because medicare pts take too long and don’t pay enough. Maybe a valid argument in a solo practice, but when one is employed by a big university which certainly gets lots of federal funding shouldn’t there be an obligation to take care of those who need you, not just those who are fun and rewarding to care for?

Live with it.

Our US doctors are the best in the world, but they are the worst businessmen. The worst thing they ever did was to turn their practices over to the MBAs, and it has been downhill ever since.

It will not stop until all physicians are employed by the local hospital. And then they’ll control (or attempt to control) admissions and testing through productivity bonuses. You’ll be admitting and testing not on the basis of patient need, but on the basis of keeping your job. And if you think insurance company gatekeepers were bad, wait until your actions affect the hospital’s bottom line.

Don’t like it?

Then change it while you have a chance. The best thing that could happen to the physician profession is the Medicare-for-all plan by John Conyers (HR676). Let’s eliminate the 31% of insurance bureaucracy waste and spend it on doctors, nurses and hospital care instead.

It never ceases to amaze me, the amount of energy that can go into a project just to avoid doing the right thing. The best, simplest, least costly, most effective thing we could do is expand what has been working so well for years, Medicare. You get sick, you get care, and the caregiver gets paid. Nothing could be simpler.

“America will always do the right thing, but only after everything else fails.” Winston Churchill

Jack Lohman
http://MoneyedPoliticians.net