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Doctors are giving up on private practice, assimilating into Big Medicine: Forgetting what is good about American entrepreneurship in medical care, with COVID diktats speeding the process
American Thinker ^ | 0/12/2021 | Keith Jackson MD

Posted on 01/12/2021 6:26:29 AM PST by SeekAndFind

The COVID-19 epidemic has accelerated a growing trend among doctors toward corporate medicine and away from private practice. The personality and priorities of doctors had already been undergoing a metamorphosis. And, just as we have witnessed the collapse of small businesses across the country from the politization of the disease, many independent physicians have lost their practices as well. American entrepreneurship in medicine is another casualty of the government's response to COVID-19.

What survives the crisis is a Big Business/Big Government cluster of health care delivery "systems" where doctors can find safe harbor. Older doctors who remember when hard work and good service made them a better living are tempering their expectations and joining up, no longer having to deal with the opaqueness and complexity of billing and collections. Younger doctors with lower expectations and a greater desire for a regular, less rigorous schedule have already adapted to the new normal.

In Star Trek, the Next Generation, the great assimilator is the soulless Borg, a space-traveling "hive" that integrates and incorporates other civilizations' technology and workforce to survive, unable to create on its own. When encountering the Borg, the doomed victims are warned that "resistance is futile." Will medical care dispensed through these health care giants approach the quality, accessibility, and overall service of a private practice?

Having been exposed to employee physicians at the Veterans' Administration hospitals and varied employee physicians at competing health care entities in Atlanta, Georgia, it is easy to see how owning a practice versus working for a conglomerate changes a doctor's attitude. If a clinic day is light in private practice, the doctor will let it be known that he is available for consultation and see how to get more traffic through his office.

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


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bigmedicine; covid19; doctors; privatepractice

1 posted on 01/12/2021 6:26:29 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Since my famly doctor retired almost ten years ago, all I can find is corporate doctors and NPs. Sad, but around here it had already become the norm.


2 posted on 01/12/2021 6:33:18 AM PST by tioga
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To: SeekAndFind

They are integrating into “the health care system,” which is code for “bureaucracy.”

Bureaucracies are infested with professional affirmative-action bureaucrats, educarats and technocrats.

Bureaucracies are metastatic cancers that only exist to parasitize their hosts and, like all cancers, eventually kill it.

I haven’t been to a doctor in years, which is why my life has not been reduced to being a revenue stream for the big-bureaucrat/big-pharmaceutical criminal complex. I am on zero prescription medications and will never be on any.

Isn’t it odd how, once they have you on one, they soon have you on fifty a day?

I bet I live longer than all the poor souls who believe they would die without the drugs from the legalized drug pushers.


3 posted on 01/12/2021 6:35:47 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (You are in far more danger from an authoritarian government than you are from a seasonal virus.)
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To: SeekAndFind

This was already happening at “Warp Speed” pre-Covid.

The option to have a doctor who actually works for you is receding quickly.


4 posted on 01/12/2021 6:37:56 AM PST by 9YearLurker
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To: SeekAndFind

Very true. Government regulations, dictates and control of virtually all hospital policies have made the classic private practice of medicine impossible. The public does not realize that physicians are de facto employees of the government and the quasi governmental insurance companies. Nor does the public realize just how medical care is rationed and the physician who wishes to remain employed serves not as the primary advocate of the patient’s best interests but the agent of the powers that control the purse. Over the last thirty years most physicians have retired or complied with the new reality. The Hippocratic oath is meaningless. Also big physician organizations such as the AMA and the various speciality “colleges” are part of the prevailing infrastructure and have no real independent or contrary opinions. When the government formally implements socialized medicine and outlaws the last true private physicians, most won’t even notice.


5 posted on 01/12/2021 6:38:59 AM PST by allendale
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To: SeekAndFind

Ended when Drs ended home visits.
They’re in with the insurance-hospital neck yoke.
OBodyMortgagers. Complete pharmaki from the kingdom of the AntiChrist.
“Many antichrists have gone out into the world”
Read John I epistle.
And “The love of money is the root of all evil”


6 posted on 01/12/2021 6:48:54 AM PST by Varsity Flight ("Ed "War by the prophesies set before you." I Timothy 1:18)
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To: SeekAndFind
re. "... owning a practice versus working for a conglomerate ..."

My late wife's doctor closed her practice several years ago, citing the demands of increased paperwork and the bureaucracy in general.

In years past I suspect doctors in private practice were able to practice medicine while spending a little time managing the business. Now managing the business takes so much time they have little time to practice medicine.

7 posted on 01/12/2021 6:58:55 AM PST by ken in texas
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To: SeekAndFind
The old-time doctor of medicine was a one-man (or one-woman) band. Like a minister or priest, the "doc" had his flock of people he took care of. As the number of people under care grew, the lone doc would partner with another doc "in exchange." That let the doc be able to attend conferences to learn more about his vocation.

When initially introduced, widespread insurance was a way for employers to attract desired workers when pay was frozen. Employer-sponsored insurance continued after the pay freezes were lifted.

Insurance meant that doctors had to kow-tow to the insurance people. The resulting paperwork became a full-time specialty, given the number of insurance companies vying for group business. What used to be a one-person show quickly grew -- and the single shop became a group. Other doctors joined the group to lessen their paperwork burden.

Is it any wonder that we now have large medical practices? The only "lone wolves" are the specialists, and even the specialists are being swallowed up into the med giants.

8 posted on 01/12/2021 7:15:03 AM PST by asinclair (Political hot air is a renewable energy resource)
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To: allendale

All of this is great motivation to eat right and exercise.


9 posted on 01/12/2021 7:24:53 AM PST by teevolt
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To: SeekAndFind

Any questions that COVID was used for the Great Reset?


10 posted on 01/12/2021 7:27:21 AM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: SeekAndFind

‘Hospitals are the most dangerous place on earth.’ Dr. David Williams. Now more than ever.


11 posted on 01/12/2021 7:28:00 AM PST by who knows what evil? (Yehovah saved more animals than people on the ark...siameserescue.org)
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To: ken in texas

Our doctor basically sold his office to a large conglomerate and stayed on as an employee; he hates it but saw no other way to survive. In the past you could get a full physical at his office; now he is required to send you to other places within the network for various segments of the exam.

Any that could retire seemed to do so (dentists as well).


12 posted on 01/12/2021 7:28:48 AM PST by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: Varsity Flight

We are ALREADY under an antiChrist system.


13 posted on 01/12/2021 7:31:45 AM PST by who knows what evil? (Yehovah saved more animals than people on the ark...siameserescue.org)
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To: SeekAndFind

It’s just the elimination of small business in general...bump for later...


14 posted on 01/12/2021 9:35:42 AM PST by indthkr
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To: SeekAndFind

Soon, they will all be unionized and donating to the libs.


15 posted on 01/12/2021 10:37:36 AM PST by aimhigh (THIS is His commandment . . . . 1 John 3:23)
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