Posted on 06/08/2014 12:24:11 AM PDT by Jet Jaguar
Edited on 06/08/2014 6:17:51 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
WASHINGTON
(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
V A ping.
Care outside the VA system - if indeed it is a totally hands-off situation for docs, and is completely outside the VA system - will work well, but only until ObamaCare totally ruins private care in a few more years.
I’m no longer taking new Medicare patients, nor is anyone else locally in my specialty, but I do accept new Tricare folks out of a sense of patriotism, and would accept VA patients that came to me with that insurance. My intake process has a wait time of about a week, generally.
What I won’t do is accept anyone who expects to still get their meds or labs at the VA, or has any other tie to that bureaucracy that would make delivery of good care difficult or aggravating. Nor will I put up with any record-keeping requirements that are any more onerous than the ones Tricare already requires.
I have a feeling the VA and I will not see eye to eye, and that I will end up seeing very few of their patients even if they do put this into place. We’ll see.
Would you accept someone who doesn’t have insurance at all?
I ask mostly because I can’t afford the current premiums, and I also don’t qualify for Medicaid—though to be honest, I don’t want to qualify for that.
Is it any different for you in that situation?
Thank you, Dr. for the long years you spent in training and experience to get to where you are. Because your knowledge and true skill is rare, the envious, many of whom can be found in the legal profession, went to work to enslave your power to themselves long ago. It happened when too many of them could not pass the Medcat to get into medical school themselves. Place on top of that, the love and respect most people invest in their physicians and you become a target for those who lust for dictatorship, so they must either, enslave you, your knowledge and experience, or they must destroy you. Sometimes I wonder what the powers that be are smoking, drinking or using, to be so diligent in their destruction of the very systems which could end up wiping them and theirs out right along with the rest of us. It is unreal and it is insane. God bless you, Dr., for soon this population will long for direct access to your services and you will not be available. I ask myself a hard question..Is this insanity a clever and devious genocidal plan of some kind where deaths will occur in large numbers from no care and few will be the wiser for it? Are the “death panels,” made up of “20 something’s” now firmly in place? This I do know..The party in power will not investigate. Perhaps the equally young heroes, who have “seen the lion and heard the owl” in Afghanstan will rise to the occasion and awaken our population to what they know. I saw some of them on TV this week..They know what is going on all over the place in this government and they are not happy! There is hope.
So, they thought putting a guy in charge whose own facility was using secret lists would be a negative? Wonder where they got that idea?
Could it be that they would claim their new guy didn’t know about his own secret lists? Could it be that he did know, thought it was OK, but wasn’t good at selling death panels?
This WH is a comedy if everything weren’t truly a matter of life and death.
Any government program will be abused. It always is. The veteran should be required always to have a veteran id with miniaturized DD214 on one side and picture, current address, etc., on the other. And there should be a requirement that the ID must be renewed every 5 or 7 years. Then they can use their credit card.
Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson said Thursday an additional 18 veterans in the Phoenix area whose names were kept off an official electronic Veterans Administration appointment list have died. Gibson said he does not know whether the 18 new deaths were related to long waiting times for appointments but said they were in addition to the 17 reported last month by the VA’s inspector general.
The 18 veterans who died were among 1,700 veterans identified in a report last week by the VA’s inspector general as being “at risk of being lost or forgotten.”
At this point what difference does it make?
That's what was suggested when I worked for the VA -- more than 30 years ago. At the time I understood that the concept was studied and the executive report indicated that not only would it be much better, it would be much cheaper. The report of the study is, I think, stored at the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.
The VA problems are systemic and the only way to find someone who isn't tainted is to recruit outside of the VA. The problem with going outside the VA is that someone who might possibly be an effective VA chief wouldn't want to work for Obama.
At least the grass is being manicured at VA facilities...and should you go into the administrators offices, the furniture is new and comfy. Let’s get our priorities straight.
But forcing veterans who served honorably to carry a regime issued ID card is racist and will deny their right to get medical care./s
Then, there’s the “mark of the beast”.
Why no Medicare? Don’t you have an ethical duty to see sick people as they come to you to the extent of your ability and regardless of their insurance?
Whew. I was worried there for a minute.
No, think about it, that would make doctors slaves. If they have to see all comers without regard to compensation, then they are no longer in charge of their lives and will also be ruined financially.
“Why no Medicare? Don’t you have an ethical duty to see sick people as they come to you to the extent of your ability and regardless of their insurance?”
No, I don’t. Grow up, if you believe this.
I don’t, and neither do any other doctors - a growing percentage - who refuse them. Mostly such patients are refused because the insurance payments are set so low that we lose money and go broke if we see enough of them. And we face federal prison time if we allow them or their family to pay us anything to make up the difference. The Feds dictate how much any other insurance they have can pay us as well. There are clinics and doctors who still do see them, and they can get their care with those doctors for as long as their practices remain financially viable, which is becoming increasingly difficult for most.
In many specialties, mine included, patients with good insurance are almost never referred to specialists for care that falls within the scope of that specialist unless the primary doctor absolutely has to do so, whereas they will routinely send patients to the specialist if Medicare is involved, thus allowing them to have a more lucrative practice at the expense of the specialist.
Medicare also insists we prescribe older generic medicines, such that our ability to render good care is often limited. The fear of Federal audits and other actions - with significant compliance burdens, and financial ruin or incarceration hanging in the balance - also limits our enthusiasm for taking Medicare, which increases our risk of exposure to such trauma enormously.
There are, BTW, a number of other criteria that also preclude me from taking many other patients into my practice, criteria independent of their insurance coverage. I have a highly select and professionally satisfying practice at this late stage in the profession, and I prefer to keep it that way. I feel no obligation to take just any patient who just wants to come see me for whatever reason.
So far, at least, docs still have the freedom to stay in business and do a good job with the patients we do see. It is a modified triage model of sorts. Our decision to do so presents me no ethical dilemmas or qualms, and anyone who thinks it should can simply go ahead and vote for left wing politicians who will further expand the forces that are ruining the perfectly good healthcare system we once had.
The old timers I knew back when I was in my training would voice their opposition to Medicare even back then, when it was much less of a problem. They saw that it would ballon out exponentially until it either bankrupted the country, or bankrupted the fine medical system we’ve always had here. It started off very slowly, like any good idea the lefties have, but even back then many knew it was the camel’s nose under the tent - and it was.
I hope you simply forgot the “/sarc” after your post. If not, there’s nothing more to talk about.
I would bet I am more conservative than you by many measures. That said, I have many medical people in my family, including an M.D. husband who went to one of the top ten med schools. I know that is doctors who think like you, with $ and comfort as primary motivators are also doctors who see medicine as a business and ego trip rather than a mission to the sick. Frankly, you are the very doctor ofwhom patients should be wary.
You don’t know me, and you have no idea what you are talking about.
The man is smart.
There is no way to enter the fray and come out whole.
Any person that signs on with Obama is by definition an idiot
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.