“doctors had better figure out that government and insurance pays them and if they don’t like it they can do something else.”
You sound like you think doctors and hospitals can just divorce themselves from government. As a whole, they can’t. Hospitals cannot survive without Medicare and Medicaid. Period. So many people are now dependent on the government that although a few Concierge practices will no doubt be successful, I do not believe medicine in general can function that way until we get the government out of medicine. And it will not go willingly. Hospital licenses, doctors’ licenses, nurses’ licenses, ancillary services, procedures, billing, charges, scheduling, etc. are all regulated by big government. If anyone wants to provide health care, they must do so under the thumb of big government. Even people with no connection to medical care, employers in general, are now forced to provide health insurance, which is regulated by...you guessed it, big government.
As to the ‘extended visit’ charge. The problem is that that designation even exists. What business is it of the federal government to tell anyone what they can charge for their services. In my area a plumber will charge you $175 to walk in the door. Yet $180 is too much for a doctor visit?
No matter the length of time the Dr. is in the room with you, you have been screened and examined by a nurse (for whom the doctor pays salary and benefits), your chart, vitals and reason for visit has been reviewed by the doctor, and when you leave there will be more charting and planning and insurance billing to be done (for which the doctor pays salary and benefits to other staff).
The government says if you dot these i’s and cross these t’s you may charge for an ‘extended visit’ and we will pay you $X, so that is what the doctor must do to survive. Just because you don’t like the sound of ‘extended visit’ correlating with a short check-up doesn’t mean the visit wasn’t worth the charge.
The problem is that the government doesn’t actually want to pay what they say they will, and when everybody learns to cross the t’s the government comes up with more rules to justify cutting payments, or they reject or delay bills for no reason, forcing the doctor to go through the same hoops over and over just to get paid.
Trust me, if doctors could get the government out of the healthcare business, they would, but it is the mindset that ‘greedy doctors’ need to be controlled that has allowed this to get to where it is now, because what entity is more in love with control than big government?
And what you are seeing is that doctors do not like it, and many of them are going to choose to do ‘something else’. Heaven help us when we find out who will be left to practice medicine under these conditions.
“Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it—and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
I’m running out of 2 centses
:)
O2
No they can’t divorce themselves. But they can realize where there money comes from and not complain about Medicare
They are notoriously unwise about administration and economics. They solidify that when they outwardly rip off the government and complain about accountability