Posted on 08/10/2009 12:19:40 PM PDT by neverdem
My father was a small town country doctor and dentist. He made house calls, He set his own hours and determined his own time off. As he got older, he limited his practice hours, and the type of dentistry he did in order to maximize proift per time worked. At the most, he made $25,000 a year -- enough to live comfortably, but not enough to completely pay his only child’s post graduate education. He considered himself a free man.
I paid my way through a private Medical School by joining the Navy. After four years of college, four years of medical school, five years of Orthopaedic Residency and four years of payback time supporting the Marine Corps, I spent another year training to be a spinal specialist. That year, 1989, as a Board Certified Orthopaedic Surgeon, I grossed $15,000.
Finally, at age 34, I began making a decent living. I worked in a small city which was underserved, was fully booked and did over 250 surgery cases a year. Nevertheless, after working as a highly trained spinal surgeon for five years, I recognized that I could not get financially ahead. I could pay my debts, but my overhead was escalating and my reimbursement (80% of which was set by the government) diminished over 40%. Any profit was taxed heavily. Unlike other businesses which can make up for diminishing profit margin by selling more widgets, physicians are true cottage industries. We make our money one patient at a time. I thought I could solve that problem by becoming a landlord and making money not dependant on my hands. (Aging surgeons cannot operate forever). My husband and I scrimped and saved for years to make a down payment on an office complex. After a few years we began to see a little profit. But then, the county passed bonds -- new schools, new palacial buildings for the local community college, and a 57 million dollar library complex (a mausoleum to paper in a digital world). Suddenly my rental business was losing money. I was working 80 hours and seven days a week and taking home less and less. I did not feel free. I had become a slave to my government: federal, state and local.
Enter the bailout. The “stimulus.” I got no stimulus money, nor do I know any small businessmen who did. Worse than that, we are the target for the tax increases needed so other bigger businesses can be supported. As 2009 progressed, the future seemed bleak.
So what was the answer? Was it to see more patients? Of course not. The HMOs taught us at least one thing: You cannot make profit in volume when you lose on every patient.
So recently, I quit. I sold everything, downsized my personal and professional life. I moved to small town America, took a part time job with a hospital. Now, I see less than half of the patients I once did, do no spinal surgery, and buy nothing but essentials and education for my children. I once employed 2 full time and 5 part time employees. I contributed significantly to the income of three factory representatives for the products I used in my practice. I was the only supplier of a critical surgical skill to a population of 360,000 people who now have no one. Now, I mostly contribute to the statistics on unemployment.
What’s wrong with slavery? Of course we all grew up with tales of the old South, with Massa beating his slaves, using the women, and separating families. But truly, these tales of the worst form of slavery do not describe the majority of Southern slave owners. Most took care of their slaves because they were a high priced commodity. If a slave is well fed, clothed and given medical care, allowed to live with his family, why would he object to being a slave? Simple…he is not free. His labor is not his own. No matter how hard he works, the fruits of his labor go to someone else. He is forced to live within the confines defined by the slave owner. Those confines may be within a luxurious mansion, or within the limits of 136000 pages of medicare regulation, but he is always restricted to someone else’s limits. The core evil of slavery is not in physical abuse -- because that is not an intrinsic property of slavery -- but in the limitation of economic and personal freedom.
I have left the plantation. I still pay too much in taxes, but by working less I have less to tax, and lots more free time to spend with my family. I can grow non taxable food, and give to charity through non-taxable volunteer time. I can use my skills with tools to build and renovate my own small house ( rather than treat patients, fight the government for reimbursement, give half or more back to the government then use what’s left to have someone else build me a house). Of course, President Obama, by declaring medical care a right, may force doctors like me to work in his nationalized health service. After all, if medical care is a right, the government may use force to insure that all people have that right. But as every slave knows, “They can pretend to pay us, and we can pretend to work.” Besides being immoral, slavery was not economically sound in 1840, and it is not any better in 2009.
Lee Hieb is an Orthopaedic Surgeon, in solo private practice. Her first-hand experience in medicine began in the 1950s, when she accompanied her father on his housecalls in Iowa.
Who is John Galt?
The 4 “S” of the Democrat party: Slavery, Secession. Segregation, Socialism.
bttt
“Simple…he is not free. His labor is not his own. No matter how hard he works, the fruits of his labor go to someone else. He is forced to live within the confines defined by the slave owner. Those confines may be within a luxurious mansion, or within the limits of 136000 pages of medicare regulation, but he is always restricted to someone else’s limits. The core evil of slavery is not in physical abuse — because that is not an intrinsic property of slavery — but in the limitation of economic and personal freedom. “
I wish some of the Obama voters would read this and understand the lives they could lead; the money they could make; the freedom to choose is lost and belongs to the Master who in this case is Obama and the a few selected elites selected at random whims.
How dare she quit her practice, doesn’t she know that she should serve the greater good until a medical board decides she is no longer worth expensive treatments....
How DARE she decide the course of her own life.
They should send her to GitMo for abandoning her Humanity duties to strangers and her selfish devotion to her children.
(The above is meant to be sarcastic)
> The 4 “S” of the Democrat party: Slavery, Secession. Segregation, Socialism
You forgot stupidity.
I’m glad someone else is talking about this.
What I would like to see is the return of the country doctor. The country doctor lives and works among his patients and knows them as people. He’s much more in touch with the locality and he knows his patients.
Know the patients and working with them. Even haggling over the cost of medical care. I’m all for it.
It may sound corny, but there’s an old movie from 1938 called “A Man To Remember” that shows on TCM every so often that is in need of viewing. It tells the tale of a man who is a country doctor and he measures his success by how many of his patients he keeps alive and not how many more patients he can cram into his waiting rom (and those are patients that he can only give ten minutes of face time to.)
It’s a great movie and the concept of a country doctor is vastly superior to some Washington bureaucrat telling old people it’s there time to die because we can provide their care and it’s better than being told by Justices like Ruth Bader-Ginsburg that abortion is a good way to get rid of the kind of people you don’t want too many of.
There are 5. You left out "Sodomy".
And “Surrender”.
The battle rages on.
The math never lies. The 40% supporting the 60% are getting tired of being punished.
Soon, like all other socialized nations, we will see the ‘Why work?’ movement here.
The 7 “S’s” of the Democrat Party:
Slavery, Secession. Segregation, Socialism, Stupidity, Sodomy, Surrender.
... and that brings us back full circle to slavery.
There. Fixed it.
Couldn’t fit in Communism, Racism, Self-Deception, Treason.
Soon, it will be, “Who isn’t John Galt?”
The docs who can afford to retire will do so. Those slaves who have to work for the gov't will do so. They will form a union. They will demand a forty hour work week with double time for overtime and being on call. They will demand to be indemnified by the government for all malpractice claims. The only remedy for the gov't will be to revoke medical licenses. "They can pretend to pay us, and we can pretend to work."
With a shortage of docs, we'll import them. No doubt some will be Muslims. Remember that doctors' plot in the UK two years ago. There was a plan to do it in the USA too.
Fewer and fewer remember when the heavy hand of government did not distort health care. In the 1960s, my divorced, working mother dragged my brother and me to the local doctor once a year for more shots than my pets get now. She paid in cash. As with any other service the doc couldn't and didn't charge any more than his customers could pay.
“They will form a union. They will demand a forty hour work week “
And let’s not forget the 10,000 mostly elderly in France, and same number in Italy, who died in a heat wave in 2003. Contributing factor - understaffed hospitals and nursing homes, unionized work hours for doctors.
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