Posted on 11/18/2008 1:18:58 PM PST by socialismisinsidious
Primary care doctors in the United States feel overworked and nearly half plan to either cut back on how many patients they see or quit medicine entirely, according to a survey released on Tuesday.
And 60 percent of 12,000 general practice physicians found they would not recommend medicine as a career.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
People do not realize that the system now does not discourage bad doctors from practicing. In fact I could argue that the system requires bad doctors to function. Even good doctors admit privately that they practice defensive medicine. This is a huge cost.
The current expectation for health care is: "Plenty for all, Better, and Free!". I think it's just a darn shame that these doctors don't understand how wonderful this will be. Maybe we need a Civilian Defense Force to help reason with these doctors and help them understand their patriotic duty.
They tried it in Michigan. They put together a data base of all the tort lawyers. The docs then notified them to find another doctor, none of which would then take them as patients. The lawyers of course sued. Guess who won?
Oh, yeah, and the “defensive medicine” occurences went way down, reducing the costs to the health insurance companies which led to lower premiums.
But NO - this example of success is not what we want nationwide,
we want SOCIALIST healthcare!
Really? Without lawyers, I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how an injured patient would be compensated for a doctor's malpractice. Can you explain that to me?
Marxists value all labor equally. As such, they should always get a neurosurgeon assigned from the local janitorial service. Recruit heart surgeons from the local plumbing supply house. Blood pump/water pump...what's the difference?
I could see this sort of crap on the horizon when I graduated from UCSD in 1976. That is one reason I decided against med school.
Probably the lawyers. This sounds a whole lot like an antitrust violation.
As a Medicare patient whose doctors base their fees on gummint allowances, I can easily see that GPs are grossly underpaid and that Podiatrists and Dermatologists are overpaid.
I got out of medicine in 1997 - there are still some in medicine who do it because they love it and would probably do it for minimum wage but there are also a lot of fairly unhappy people who are hanging on from day to day. In all likelihood it will get a lot worse before it gets any better, if it ever does.
Doctors are human and make honest mistakes and insurance will cover. No different than if you get hurt in a car accident. There is no need for trial attorneys. Habitually bad doctors or gross negligence should end up with taking away the license and criminal charges respectively.
Medical tourism will be the last frontier for inexpensive, quality healthcare. The forecast calls for excursions to private hospitals (staffed by American doctors and mostly local support workers) in central America especially - and possibly hospital cruisers (converted luxury liners flying foreign flags) off the coast. They can avoid legal costs (and the attendant insurance costs), avoid the regulatory headaches, avoid HMOS, and avoid all manner of wasteful bureaucratic garbage.
It will cost millions of domestic jobs in the health services sector, but Americans are not going to be willing to queue for months for government services, nor pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for procedures in domestic private hospitals. The demand for rapid, cost-effective medical care is not going to go away. Supply will grow wherever it can - if not in America, then elsewhere. American doctors will be tempted by the offer to practice medicine (not fill in paperwork) and increase their take-home pay (despite charging less per procedure - the $ increase will come from the massive savings in overhead).
The costs already are lower for medical tourism - surgical procedures performed by top AMERICAN surgeons can be scheduled in other nations for a fraction of the cost to the patient. It is the difference between $200,000 domestically and $15,000 outside for a particular kind of heart surgery, or $20,000 vs $6000 for a certain cosmetic surgery (in the 15k and 6k cases, this is all inclusive, meals and lodging and airfare in addition to surgery and recovery care - yes, the American healthcare consumer is now getting totally ripped off thanks to the trial lawyers, workers unions, government regulations, and bureaucrats). Patients spend recovery time at the oceanfront in low-cost, warm-weather nations. None of this is fiction, it is already happening - the future is different only in scale.
The worse the government screws up health-care, the better these opportunities get. Pity about the tax-base...lol.
The road to hell was paved by the good intentions of the completely clueless. Thanks for the ping.
Nobody in their right mind can run a medical practice with Medicare, Medicaid, or Tricare (military dependents).
You know people with good insurance go to the doctor a whole lot more than those who don’t. People feel like they have it and they pay for it someway and they’re going to get their money’s worth. If there were incentives not to spend, doctors would be less overworked.
Just an anecdotal story, my husband was president of a large cooperative. It seemed that every week someone was getting a splinter or a cut, hurting their backs and running to the Dr. and it was going on Worker’s Comp.. He implemented a deal, for each week that passed with no WC claims there was a crisp $50 and everybody’s name was put in the hat and the winner was drawn out. It literally cut WC claims by 90%.
What type of surgery has a mere 4 year residency? I don’t know of any.
Insurance is imperfect for a lot of reasons, the least of which is that claims can be denied. Let's say for a moment that I am injured as a result of a doctor's negligence. Let's further assume that the doctor was, in fact, negligent. I file a claim with the doctor's insurance and the insurance company denies my claim. What then?
Further, even if a claim isn't denied, an individual can be underinsured, leaving the injured party to bear part of the cost of the tortfeasor's negligence. That is unjust.
Habitually bad doctors or gross negligence should end up with taking away the license and criminal charges respectively.
While taking away a doctor's license and filing criminal charges is all well and good, that doesn't begin to compensate the injured victims.
Ophthalmology and Ob/Gyn are still 4 years. General Internal medicine, Pediatrics and Family Practice are 3. Most everything else is five or more.
Who is Dr. Galt?
When we adopted our kids from Russia, our driver between two towns near the Ural mountains was a doctor. His salary was about $50/month (this was about 10 years ago). He earned more driving us on that 3 hour trip than he had earned in one month of his medical practice. That tells you about how the communists value medical training (at least for the doctors who treat the commoners).
Please define negligence
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.