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Why it’s hell to be a doctor in America today
NY Post ^ | 08/23/2014 | Susannah Cahalan

Posted on 08/23/2014 1:34:04 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen

Dr. Sandeep Jauhar is mad as hell. American health care is in upheaval. On one side, overhead and malpractice insurance costs keep increasing, while salaries stagnate. On the other, patients believe that expensive drugs are better, more people are on government-run insurance that pays less, while private insurance fights every claim. Now doctors spend most of their time trying to game the system, requiring endless paperwork, protracted bureaucratic battles and “treadmill medicine,” seeing as many patients as possible in as little time. This problem will only intensify as millions join the ranks of the insured under the Affordable Care Act.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: obamacare
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To: omegatoo

You said exactly what I said in a later post.


41 posted on 08/23/2014 4:08:01 PM PDT by stanne
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To: Mom MD

“Maybe her generation of physicians will turn this around. Who knows....”

I think things will get better, but it will obviously take some time. Congratulations on having a wonderful daughter. That she wants to follow in your footsteps means something, and you and your husband should be proud of yourselves as well as of her. I hope things get better for you professionally.


42 posted on 08/23/2014 4:10:39 PM PDT by pieceofthepuzzle
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To: Kid Shelleen

Another debilitating social and economic side-effect of fiat money


43 posted on 08/23/2014 4:35:02 PM PDT by PGR88
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To: Hot Tabasco

“I have been to two rehab facilities and have never experienced the account your wife seems to be trying to imply...........

Nothing personal but it sounds to me like your wife just may have an axe to grind given her perpensity for not being able to hold a legitimate nursing position for any length of time.

Her personal complaints do not jive with all the nurses and medical professionals I happen to know...”

Odd. I know a number of nurses - at church - and they tell similar stories.

What is YOUR ax to grind? What nonsense are YOU trying to push? What makes you think all is wonderful in the medical field?


44 posted on 08/23/2014 4:54:48 PM PDT by Mr Rogers
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To: stanne

Ok. I’ll just tell my kids I can’t pay for school lose my house and live on the street so I can give my services away for free. Great solution. Why didn’t I think of that before????


45 posted on 08/23/2014 5:38:14 PM PDT by Mom MD
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To: The Antiyuppie

We also have lots of minorities dieing in their teens because of their living in drug warzones. This does not make our longevity statistics easily comparable.


46 posted on 08/23/2014 5:52:46 PM PDT by sgtyork (Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy)
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To: stanne

Medicare pays for medical care. They set the rates, and doctors hate them, but rip them off at the same time.

Docs can cry me a river.


47 posted on 08/23/2014 5:55:32 PM PDT by stanne
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To: stanne
pretty broad brush yer paintin with there pal...
48 posted on 08/23/2014 6:26:10 PM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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To: Mom MD

Have you considered a direct care practice? My doctor (a D.O.) took the leap and couldn’t be happier. No coding, no lousy re-imbursement, no hours spent on useless documentation.

Mrs. AV


49 posted on 08/23/2014 6:31:55 PM PDT by Atomic Vomit (http://www.cafepress.com/aroostookbeauty/358829)
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To: Atomic Vomit

I am a hospitalist, I care only for hospitalized patients, so it wouldnt work for me. I can hardly tell someone that I have the medications and therapies to help their acute heart attack, severe pain or whatever and will be happy to provide my services as soon as they pay cash up front.

Im glad for the outpatient docs that go direct care, but it does leave a lot of patients in a lurch. My parents lost their doc in Florida when he went to a boutique practice and they couldn’t afford his rates.... Great for the people that can afford it not so good for others

My personal idea to reform healthcare is to go to high deductible catastrophic coverage, and let folks pay out of pocket up to that point. Combined with health care saving accounts, it gives everyone skin in the game. Fewer people will call an ambulance for a sore throat if they know they have to pay the first x thousand dollars out of pocket - they will go to the urgent care for the 25 dollar throat culture instead.


50 posted on 08/23/2014 6:37:29 PM PDT by Mom MD
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To: Chode

Doctors complaining about Medicare demanding documentation from them is not becoming.

doctors like to play the who me game.

Patients don’t pay for their own medical care, third party payer does.

And when patients don’t work, they get government health care.

When patients are illegal, they use emergency rooms, where the hospital or the government picks up the cost.

When I pay $6500.00 for a half day in the hospital for my kid, and foreigners roam the hall waiting for their family members to get out of surgery, I know I’m paying for them because I am stupid enough to have a job.

That $6500.00 pays for those who don’t pay.

But doctors get paid.

And this system is going under.

Medicare went bankrupt in the early eighties, and, in addition to it being a flawed system, it failed in great part due to the vast amount of theft from the medical community - doctors, pretending the reimbursement they received from the govt was free money.

It was doctors who sunk medicare. They should have seen it as a flawed system and not grown dependent on it.

Instead they bled it dry.

Now people who abuse their bodies their whole lives get excellent medical care and those who choose to eat right, go to the gym and visit competent natural healers pay out of pocket, while the self abusers get huge money.

If any doctor does not, or hadn’t, seen this as a system with a time limit, they can cry me a river.

It is not a system which heals, or prevents disease or includes patients in their own healing.

And PS, if the AMA would stop being pro abortion, it might get back in the graces.

As it is, the only doctors we go to are those who are pro life, who accept and include our choices of treatment, and who don’t treat us like we are stupid with no knowledge.

But they are few and far between.

doctors had better figure out that government and insurance pays them and if they don’t like it they can do something else.

There’s this comment:
“My doc sees me for two to three minutes per visit and charges medicare for an “extended visit”, every time.”

Then there’s this comment:

“I spend more time keeping insurance companies happy and trying to play medicare/medicaid games than I do taking care of patients. And it breaks my heart when I can’t get around the insurance company to do the right thing for the patient.”

Which is it?

Doctors work well with medicare and appreciate the relationship they’ve created with each other? Or doctors don’t need medicare, so they don’t rip it off nor complain about it?


51 posted on 08/23/2014 6:53:39 PM PDT by stanne
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To: Mom MD

Here’s what we do:

We pay our doctor 2000.00 yearly out of our pockets and for that we receive yearly physicals, minor surgical procedures(sutures, removal skin lesions,etc.), EKGs, some lab tests(those that don’t have to be sent out),osteopathic care. There is a 20.00 copay for office visits after the physical.
The physical is one hour long and very in-depth. Appointments are typically obtained within two days of us calling for anything else.

We combine this with a medical sharing ministry for catastrophic re-imbursement. This costs 405.00 monthly. so total cost with the DC practice plan is about 600.00 monthly.
Our cost for an obamacare silver plan with a huge deductible would be approximately 1500.00-2000.00 monthly.

So far it is working wonderfully for us. I understand it’s not for everyone, but it really can be cost-effective.

I’m sorry to hear doctors talk about leaving medicine when they work so hard and sacrifice so much to get there. They need to think about alternatives before just throwing it all away.
Mrs. AV


52 posted on 08/23/2014 7:09:27 PM PDT by Atomic Vomit (http://www.cafepress.com/aroostookbeauty/358829)
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To: Atomic Vomit

Good for you. Keep going. If anything will save health care in this country it will be innovation like yours


53 posted on 08/23/2014 7:32:48 PM PDT by Mom MD
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To: stanne

“doctors had better figure out that government and insurance pays them and if they don’t like it they can do something else.”

You sound like you think doctors and hospitals can just divorce themselves from government. As a whole, they can’t. Hospitals cannot survive without Medicare and Medicaid. Period. So many people are now dependent on the government that although a few Concierge practices will no doubt be successful, I do not believe medicine in general can function that way until we get the government out of medicine. And it will not go willingly. Hospital licenses, doctors’ licenses, nurses’ licenses, ancillary services, procedures, billing, charges, scheduling, etc. are all regulated by big government. If anyone wants to provide health care, they must do so under the thumb of big government. Even people with no connection to medical care, employers in general, are now forced to provide health insurance, which is regulated by...you guessed it, big government.

As to the ‘extended visit’ charge. The problem is that that designation even exists. What business is it of the federal government to tell anyone what they can charge for their services. In my area a plumber will charge you $175 to walk in the door. Yet $180 is too much for a doctor visit?

No matter the length of time the Dr. is in the room with you, you have been screened and examined by a nurse (for whom the doctor pays salary and benefits), your chart, vitals and reason for visit has been reviewed by the doctor, and when you leave there will be more charting and planning and insurance billing to be done (for which the doctor pays salary and benefits to other staff).

The government says if you dot these i’s and cross these t’s you may charge for an ‘extended visit’ and we will pay you $X, so that is what the doctor must do to survive. Just because you don’t like the sound of ‘extended visit’ correlating with a short check-up doesn’t mean the visit wasn’t worth the charge.

The problem is that the government doesn’t actually want to pay what they say they will, and when everybody learns to cross the t’s the government comes up with more rules to justify cutting payments, or they reject or delay bills for no reason, forcing the doctor to go through the same hoops over and over just to get paid.

Trust me, if doctors could get the government out of the healthcare business, they would, but it is the mindset that ‘greedy doctors’ need to be controlled that has allowed this to get to where it is now, because what entity is more in love with control than big government?

And what you are seeing is that doctors do not like it, and many of them are going to choose to do ‘something else’. Heaven help us when we find out who will be left to practice medicine under these conditions.

“Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it—and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

I’m running out of 2 centses

:)

O2


54 posted on 08/23/2014 7:36:12 PM PDT by omegatoo (You know you'll get your money's worth...become a monthly donor!)
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To: stanne
my point is, not all/and not the majority(in my opinion) of Doc's are committing FRAUD... vote RAT maybe but not criminals

my Doc is a Col. in the NYANG and has been deployed THREE times, and anybody telling him he's defrauding the system has a good chance of getting knocked on their arse for it

the Doc i had before him was a Doc in the Air Force for 20years till he retired and went into private practice and retired after 20years of that

and i doubt any of the FReeper Doc's here are criminals either

saying they are all criminals and telling them if they don't like the system to quit is the same as saying everybody in CA and NY deserve what ever happens to them even though there are good God fearing Conservatives there but out numbered, and telling them to move if they don't like it is simply juvenile

55 posted on 08/23/2014 7:37:11 PM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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To: omegatoo

No they can’t divorce themselves. But they can realize where there money comes from and not complain about Medicare

They are notoriously unwise about administration and economics. They solidify that when they outwardly rip off the government and complain about accountability


56 posted on 08/23/2014 7:56:32 PM PDT by stanne
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To: Chode

The medical care system in this country is based on sick care

The medical care system in the military is based on a socialized medical care system but with a cooperative and healthy patient population responsible to their caregivers and accountable or they have to get out.

And the funding allows for good doctors. So it is not a utopian socialized medicine system it is a tried and true one

And it is vastly different from the us system


57 posted on 08/23/2014 8:00:49 PM PDT by stanne
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To: stanne

Medicare does not pay what it costs to deliver medical care. To say that doctors cannot complain about that is supporting a big government that drives up the cost with regulations, red tape and meaningless demands and then doesn’t want to support those costs with their forced programs.

Patients on medicare are not the problem, the government running healthcare is the problem. Comparing the military system to any other is apples to oranges. Last I heard you cannot sue military healthcare providers. Socialism cannot exist half way. Costs can be controlled when doctors are allowed to be doctors again and not potential defendants.

Some doctors do defraud medicare, but complying with requirements set up by the government to bill appropriately is not fraud, and implying that maximizing billing within the rules is fraud is insulting a large number of physicians who don’t deserve it.

O2


58 posted on 08/23/2014 8:32:43 PM PDT by omegatoo (You know you'll get your money's worth...become a monthly donor!)
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To: Mom MD

Yeah. This is why I’m overseas stuffing as much cash as I can tax free into my pocket for a couple years before I either retire or cut way way back .
Also no drunks, almost no narcotic seekers, “ suicides”, social admissions, HIPPA , EMTALA, IG, malpractice threats, etc etc.

Of those 6% of doctors in the US who are happy, I bet 90% of those are in specialties that work for cash and don’t deal with insurance or hospitals.
So plastic surgeons, ophthalmologists , dermatologists doing cosmetic enhancements and Concierge practices.....


59 posted on 08/23/2014 9:33:47 PM PDT by Kozak ("It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal" Henry Kissinger)
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To: The Antiyuppie

Some of that is statistical games on things like neonatal deaths.
We count lots of things as deaths that are not counted in other countries.


60 posted on 08/23/2014 9:45:14 PM PDT by Kozak ("It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal" Henry Kissinger)
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