i think doctors are overpayed- take a look at the doctors in Europe, they make about a third of what US doctors make… and their healthcare system is better!!!!

most US doctors get into the field for the money, i mean you should listen to medical students some time, this is literally all they talk about. i heard one resident tell me that he wanted to work in a spa and do botox therapy because it’s not covered by insurance – forcing people to pay in cash. he was calculating how much he’d make… i mean what happened to getting into medicine to help people. medical students need to take more ethics courses, all they think about is money.

I did not go to business school – or law school. I went to medical school. And I went to medical school to practice medicine. And there are only so many hours in the day. And FYI I’ve already dropped a small fortune on lawyers (fighting hospital executives) – only to be swindled by perjury, contempt and fraud that NO ONE in a position of oversight seems to give a rat’s tail about. I don’t have another small fortune to spend on slick lobbyists – and the big bad “physician advocacy” organizations that do have the money and are supposed to have my back stopped listening to the little guys on the front lines long ago.

Hitching the wagon to insurers is a two-way street. Patients hitch to have their bills paid. And the government is in the equation because so many Americans think that medical care should be free. It’s like trains crashing into one another.

Many Pediatricians might as well be full time employees of the federal government anyway – because a good portion of our reimbursement is not from private insurers, but Medicaid.

The general public has got to get it’s head out of its butt where doctors are concerned.

Politicians have got to start answering some of these letters – both the open ones and the real ones. And they’ve got to offer more than lip service if they want this “valuable” profession to survive and thrive.

Alas, with a hospital administrator in the White House, I don’t have a lot of hope that anything is going to “change”.

Actually, I do no such thing. Putting aside the fact that by all objective measures you are “rich”, which you should be based on your training and the value of your skills.

What I am saying is that if you don’t do something other than hitch your wagon to your insurers, you’re going to be govt. employees. By all means, study how they get tort “reform” passed (which, whatever you want to call it, they mean caps on their liability exposure regardless of fault). They hire good lobbyists, they hire good pr people, they write the legislation, and they get someone to put it up in state legislatures. Then they get you guys to do their dirty work and demonize the other side for them.

Do it for yourselves! Stop whining about how much you’ve sacrificed, for starters, because everyone feels like they’ve sacrificed, and 90% of Americans aren’t renumerated nearly as well as you. Start talking about the value you give to the patient.

You can pretend that it’s not a business, but you have to earn a living. You’ve had the luxury of not pretending it’s a business because you didn’t get paid by your customer for decades, you got paid, and well, by the govt. Well times are changing, and the govt is cutting costs, so you better start getting your head around that unless you want to become a full time employee of the federal govt. or states.

I’m trying to give you a wake up call, but you seem determined to resist it out of unwillingness to recognize your own role in getting your profession to where it is. Admitting physicians have made mistakes doesn’t preclude you from changing course.

Perhaps your profession could admit that, for the last 10-15 years or so, some of your kind have gotten away with PROFESSIONAL MURDER. I’ve yet to see a hospital administrator admit that they were wrong – about anything – and I’ve seen them do some fairly horrific things to doctors.

Sometimes just for the giggles . . . to prove that they could . . . to get one over on the doctor.

I repeat. Horrific, life-destroying things.

Now that some of it is finally bubbling up to the top of the cesspool, I’m sure your profession would love mine to “check blame and selfishness” at the door.

It’s called cheap grace.

Moreover, after THE HELL I’ve been put through for doing the right thing by a patient over a decade ago (in case you don’t get it, the wounds are still raw), I don’t feel the inclination to mince words in order to make progress.

I’m also WAY sick of the “credibility” jab. Again, point and click. Read the following links on my blog (in the sidebar):

http://drjshousecalls.blogspot.com/2008/06/dogs-and-ponies-one-does-not-even-get.html

http://drjshousecalls.blogspot.com/2008/08/well-now-i-guess-i-dont-have-to-sue.html

Then tell me I have no credibility.

In terms of choosing one’s words a little better, I’d love for you to explain how I personally have “contributed to the mess we’re in now”. Because I am most certainly NOT prepared to acknowledge that.

In fact, I’ve spent most of my time living with or cleaning up somebody else’s messes and just trying to survive.

Instead of lying down and taking what was dished out (like so many doctors are forced – for one reason or another – to do), I’ve decided to take it all back to the people who made the mess.

I refuse to live in fear anymore. And I won’t be patronized. Please be advised, that I know all the smooth administrator moves.

As an aside (WHEELS), and speaking of Pennsylvania newspapers, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette did a stellar piece several years ago on the abuses of medical peer review (by you guessed it – overzealous hospital administrators trying to silence medical whistle-blowers). Alas the story/series did not really take flight:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03299/234499.stm

By the way, I’m not a left-leaning journalist. I am a right-leaning “overpaid medical group administrator”.

What would you do?

……become a community organizer……..

As for my thoughts on the media, they’re not printable. I’ve been trying to get in the door – first via a website – then via a blog – since 2004 (I think it was 2004).

The local media has buried this story – because it embarrasses the very important people in power . . . and that line stretches all the way from Raleigh to Atlanta to Washington.

In classic “Catch 22″ fashion, the national media has pretty much blown this off as a “local story”. I’ve contacted everyone from 60 Minutes to Oprah and have gotten nowhere. Again, the sad saga of a lowly Pediatrician in public service who saw her practice/life in her hometown destroyed (after standing up to threats and saving a newborn’s life) does not seem to strike a cord with the media. It’s not for lack of trying.

It does not fit an agenda I suppose.

One of the biggest problems I have encoutered is the mindset of folks like Anon 11:56 . . . who seem determined to peg all doctors as self-interested, greedy/”rich”, souless, and politically inept “providers” . . . as opposed to dedicated professionals who have already sacrificed much to get where they are – only to see their profession raped and pillaged by outsiders (that would be the lawyers and business-school grads) skimming off the top, and their patients transformed into “customers” who are always right even when they’re wrong.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Dr. Johnson, you touched on the media. There must be a way to get this message out through the media. This past election was greatly swayed by the media (whether that be bias or the fact that Obama had a billion dollars to occupy all the media outlets or both). America has become a place where the loudest voices lead, oftentimes regardless of the message.

What are your thoughts on pursuing a media outlet to voice these concerns? Obviously, they’ve been voiced on some level repeatedly, but a voice that will be heard more clearly?

Again, there’s a blog. Click the name. READ it.

I wasn’t around “40 years ago” when medicine “sold its soul”. Morevoer, I’m not asking for the government to solve all my problems . . . it would be a tall order anyway given that the government won’t even acknowledge I had/have one.

Tort reform is not just about caps and insurers. It’s about the responsibility to do a better job of policing our own. It’s about getting back to the basics of medicine without the lawyers lilving on our shoulders. The reform you poo-poo might keep some of us from getting sued in the first place . . . it might allow us to focus on our lives and our careers and our patients . . . rather than hunkering down for the 1-10 year ride of our lives courtesy of some ambulance-chaser. It might cut down on defensive medicine . . . as well the cost of providing medicine.

I honestly don’t know what to do about the AMA and our state medical societies – or the “fat and happy” members of our profession (who generally are content to sit on their fat butts as long as they’re happy). Right now they’re all part of the problem.

“Hire someone to write some legislation.” Many of our current problems now are mired in badly written legislation. Doctors may start things – but by the time something gets passed it’s morphed into something unrecognizable.

OBTW, that also put us back to the lawyers solving our problems. For money, of course.