ALERT: Strong words follow.
Jim,
I am a physician, and I was outraged that you would proudly profess your ignorance in this manner. I had planned on writing a scathing rebuttal to your post, but I figured it was a lost cause. So just let me say, "B**w me!"
Reasoned disagreement would be far preferable to "scathing rebuttal," but even the latter beats the juvenile way you ended your response.
Dr.Free Market, he didn't say that you are personally greedy or corrupt. He just said that there are greedy and/or corrupt doctors in the system and that they are part of the problem. I think the posting oversimplifies, but makes a valid point.
The quality of health care in America is excellent, but the cost is excessive. I think that the problem with access to health care is multifacited. Greedy insurence companies are so obsessed with profits, they try to intimidate doctors into not fulfilling their responsibiilities. Unethical trial lawyers are so consumed with shaking down excessive fees and publicity, they drive up the cost of insurance and practicing medicine to the point where dedicated doctors have to close shop. The food processing industry so loads foods with chemicals and preservatives that no one gets the nutritional value from food that previous generations did, making more people unhealthy and requiring medical care of some sort.
Every one of these factors feeds off of each other, and the public is paying the price.