What Do I Know? I’m Just a Doctor
It is projected that by the end of 2013 only 33% of physicians in our country will be in private practice. The remaining will be corporate doctors who will work 9 to 5. You will be assigned to one of these doctors. There is no choice.
If you don’t like him or her… tough. He or she may not like you! Oh wait, that can’t be true. President Obama promised that if you like your doctor, you can keep you doctor.
Then there is the Physician Advisory Board: 15 non-practicing physicians who will decide what will be covered and what won’t. There will be a simple algorithm for quick decision-making. No clinical thought process here.
Are you 85 years old? No bypass for you! Never mind you’re in otherwise tip-top shape and can live another 15 years in good health. Mammograms? Bah, humbug. It’s cheaper if we start testing after 50.
Wait, you say. Obama will pay for my kids’ health insurance until 26. Hey, that sounds good, as my daughter is 21. Never mind that this is like one of those bad midnight infomercials selling you something you don’t need and adding, “But wait, there’s more. Order now and we’ll send you two — just pay additional shipping and handling.”
The health insurance for the 18 to 26 year old is comprehensive, very expensive insurance. The insurance companies make a killing with this plan. These young kids for the most part don’t use it. They are healthy! We’re paying for filet mignon, when all we want and need is a quarter pounder. Actually these young people are paying for someone else to have filet mignon! These 20-somethings need catastrophic insurance or major illness insurance, not cradle-to-grave coverage. ObamaCare is intellectually dishonest.
There are so many glaring problems with ObamaCare that it’s amazing the thing ever got passed. I’ll touch on those in another rant. Practicing front-line physicians have been screaming at the top of our lungs… but to an empty auditorium. Remember Obama claiming we have to stop the pediatrician from taking out an unnecessary tonsil just to make a buck? Those greedy doctors.
By the way, Mr President, pediatricians don’t do tonsillectomies. If Obama were a doctor, he would be sued for malpractice … probably by John Edwards!
The irony of ObamaCare is that as a private practice physician, one of the 33% who are left, I will do very well with ObamaCare. There are fewer and fewer doctors, and more and more patients. Tax or not, why am I mad as hell? Because I care. This is just bad medicine for our country.
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thumbnail and image courtesy Shutterstock / Rido
An Ass masquerading as a President found a Doctor’s white lab coat which had been left out in the sun to dry. He put it on and spoke to his countrymen. All bowed, both men and women, and he was a proud Ass that day. In his delight he lifted up his voice and brayed incoherently and then every one knew him for what he really was.
Dr. Weiss, a good essay. A lot of doctors are saying the same thing and there are a whole lot of us average people out here that are mad as heck over the passage of Obamacare and even more angry at John Roberts. But, there might not be anything we can do about it. This thing probably is just going to have to play itself out to the detriment of the whole country. Sometimes a society has gone so far in the wrong direction it can’t be saved from itself. If Obama gets re-elected in November the slide down will be permanent.
I’m one of those young people you spoke about. Like you, I have nothing to gain from opposing ObamaCare,it will only benefit me. I oppose it because it is unconstitutional to force people to buy something they don’t want, and it is un-American as well. Even the Supreme Court had to transmogrify it into a tax in order to squeeze it through as “constitutional”. You know somebody is up to no good when weasel tactics like this must be resorted to.
Besides that, I just wanted to say that as a man, a member of a group that traditionally HATES going to the doctor,I’d make an appointment with you just to shake your hand,sir.
I understand that you cannot continue to practice if you cannot make enough money to cover your own costs and to purchase the food your family needs to survive,and the government should not be forcing you to work for less than what your services are worth,or for free. Those are not the ideals this country was built on. As a man of medicine you provide a service which equates to giving life itself. It is invaluable to many people. Thank you for speaking out against this unconstitutional abomination,this monstrosity called ObamaCare.
“There are so many glaring problems with ObamaCare that it’s amazing the thing ever got passed.”
It wouldn’t have passed if senators weren’t bought off.
Or if congressmen bought the “excutive order promise” that ObamaCare wouldn’t be involved in abortions.
Or if the Senate didn’t work on Christmas Eve.
The only way it could pass was by cheating.
Actually, that’s the only way liberals can every pass anything, or get elected.
Or, it wouldn’t have been passed if Obama and all the other congress-people were subjected to it and had to have the same treatment as all the other Americans!!! Can you see Michelle Obama going to the same doctor as us and getting the same denials of coverage as us? No way!!! And their kids definitely wouldn’t be caught dead at my kids pediatrician now, would they? This whole thing is a joke and we are not the ones laughing, Obama and all the others who won’t be on the same plan as all of us are!!!
I’ve only got one small quibble – “Front Line Doctors” were involved in writing ObamaCare… but that happened in 1975 when it was written. The bill is utterly incoherent because it was updated by blithering idiots who had to “pass the bill to learn what was in it”. Had they started fresh they might have been able to write an OK piece of legislation but, given the players involved, the odds on that are worse than playing the Lottery.
For most, health insurance is like a gym membership or cable bundle. You pay for a lot of stuff that you never use and, in do so, you’re subsidizing other users. Typically, the many pay for the few. Then when you want to use the other services you find they’re out of order or the system is down for maintenance.
It is not about writing good public policy. It is about bribing enough of your teammates to vote yea, so you can put a hash mark in the “win” column. Then you can go about the country touting your “historic” legislation as a campaign tool.
Don’t pretend that only one party does this.
No, it’s actually about reaching the goal of nationalized health care. The process started with Medicare, advanced with HMOs, stalled for a bit with HillaryCare, and accelerated with ObamaCare which, if successful, will destroy the private health care system. The citizens will then demand nationalized health care… and the politicians who desperately want the power the program will give them will, quite reluctantly and with much gnashing of teeth, generously agree.
Yes, the doctor is in. Please take a number and we’ll call you eventually. In the mean time, kindly view this educational video concerning your end of life options. Press 1 Esapanol 2 Arabic 3 English. If you would like to become a living organ donor, please talk with Clarice, ext. 32. If you require a prescription refill, please fill out forms 13A, 32B and 41 and deposit them in the slot marked ‘Lots of luck’. If you have insurance forms, disability forms, or questions concerning billing, well, you’re SOL. Please be advised that if you miss an appointment there will be a minimum three week delay before we can reschedule a new one. The patients’ bathroom is just down the hall on the seventh floor. If you require change, a bill changer is located on level five. Please turn off your cellphones. Please come appropriately dressed. Please avoid bringing unmanageable infants. Please avoid loud conversation. Please do not stare at other patients, er customers. We would encourage you to think of the greatr societal good, and try to limit frequent visits to the clinic. Seniors, please remember, health care is a finite resource, and it is unfair of you to overutilize it . Many youthful scumbags who haven’t contributed one cent to society are deserving of our attention.
Thank you,
Your caring health care provider
You forgot 4) Chinese.
Though honestly given a little more time it will be 1) Chinese, 2) Espanol, 3) Arabic … and English will get removed because it’s the language of evil white oppressors.
Amen to that!!! It makes me so mad to have to press ANY number for English!!!
As a Canadian, I can only echo Alice Cooper. Welcome to my nightmare. My doctor of 40 years retired last year and since I live in the hinterland (the lost 1500 miles between Toronto and Winnipeg) and not one of our big cities, I am unable to find another. If I need healthcare, I must go to my hospital emergency. I won’t go into how much fun that is since my city went from three larger hospitals to one smaller one called a Health Science Centre. I can understand triage being practiced in an emergency ward but we also have triage practiced on the larger scale. Sure, if you have a heart attack or are bleeding to death you will get prompt care. If, however, you have need of what they describe as elective care or have a difficult to diagnose problem, you are in line for whenever they get around to you. My wife has been waiting for a colonoscopy for six months. Due to the pain she is in, in May, she was moved up on the “emergency” list and we finally saw the G.I. specialist at the end of June. He said he can get to her in two OR three months. Because she is not bleeding and is not losing weight and because the bloodtests “look good”, she can remain in pain until then. We do not have the option of paying for private insurance or the ability to pay to go the U.S. She lived in Wisconsin for 15 years and assures me that you have much better health care. You wouldn’t treat a dog this way. Rationed health care is not health care at all. I could go on but you get the picture.
in the current US (pre-obamacontrol) system, your wife would be diagnosed this week, and treated next, unless one doctor concluded it was an emergency, in which case the treatment would be this week as well.
It wouldn’t matter how much money you have.
That’s the system they have “fixed”.
Not to rub salt, but at the end of April my brother was diagnosed with liver disease, was seeing a GI. He wanted to do, after arranging a payment plan as my brother had no insurance, a colonoscopy just check for other problems. Could have done it within the week after setting up the payment plan. We declined as it was unnecessary and probably dangerous in his primary condition. That turned out to be correct as 3 weeks later, the liver disease had him on the ropes and took him soon after. Heck, in the hospital they found gall stones while checking the liver and evaluated him for surgery for this condition which was offering no symptoms. The surgeon declined since elective surgery in his condition would have been tantamount to murder.
But a completely discretionary colonoscopy in a week is what we have down here.
Thanks for sharing this and letting us know about the road the U.S. should avoid at all costs. I am so thankful for the doctors and quality care we have in the U.S. Several years ago, I found out I had a condition where my heart stopped beating while I was asleep – for as long as 12 seconds at a time, and numerous times each night. The doctor said I could die from it or suffer a stroke. I found about this at 4 p.m. At 8 a.m. the NEXT DAY, I was on the operating table getting a pacemaker put in. (It’s set to trigger a pulse if it notices too much of a pause in my sleep.) We have the best healthcare in the world, and Obamacare will destroy it.
1) Having experienced both British and Canadian medicine, my first concern is for the MD’s, especially the specialists in their prime, whose training, wisdom and experience takes many years to replicate in younger aspirants. If they lack the economic incentive to work hard (TAXES); and excessive barriers to entry (rationed “billing numbers” in single payer government monopoly systems like that of Ontario, Canada, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the effect on the supply side of medical care (availability) will lead to triage medicine (so called death panels) and a preference based system where the “well connected” can jostle the queue.
2) Perusal of the Ontario Ministry of Health waiting times webpage http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/public/programs/waittimes/ is illustrative of the effects of supply side control (rationing) and a single payer system on the availability of care.
3) Ask yourself why waiting times for common procedures are months in Niagara Falls, Ontario, and merely hours in Niagara Falls, NY or down the interstate 20 minutes in Buffalo. Ask yourself why Ontario insurance will not cover a patient who crosses that 1/4 mile Rainbow Bridge at the Falls to get quicker care and a longer life. Ask yourself why clinics in Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo regularly run full page advertisements in Toronto’s four daily papers advertising “next day” appointments for cash paying patients who can die in the waiting lines in Ontario; for example, cancer MRI’s — see Ontario Wait Times, point #2 above.
4) On a personal note, when I left Canada in 2008 several friends and business associates berated me for not being grateful for the “free” by-pass operation that I was given in 1996. The reality is that (a) the system that triaged me quickly (at the expense of a patient who had waited months, I met him….) does not exist anymore. Its worse. (b) I paid for that procedure several times over with confiscatory 50% income taxes and 13% sales taxes; and (c) when I breezed into my cardiologist for the first of several consultations (in my major city in the southern US) my jaw dropped in surprised when I saw the latest Israeli built diagnostic equipment; the speed at which I was processed; and the vision of the cardiologist in setting very aggressive goals to ensure a long life time for me. I did not know that such medicine was possible. And I had been treated at Canada’s foremost cardiac center, University Health Care Systems (formerly, Toronto General Hospital). The final kick in the rear–symbolic I believe of the whole mythmaking about public health care–was that it took one year of letters, emails and phone calls by the cardiologist’s staff and me to get my surgical records extracted from the bowels of that Toronto hospital’s record room and transfered to my current practitioner.
5) Don’t think that gov’t health care is free. In Ontario, I paid in a supplemental policy to cover all the items EXCLUDED from my state policy (dental & medicine for starters) about what my family of FOUR was paying in COBRA when my wife briefly was unemployed.
6) True my wife’s employer group is small and the current insurance payments are much higher than they would be in a larger group with a different employer. I believe that this illustrates the present deficiencies of the US system, NOT fixed by Obamacare. Tort reform. No inter state marketplace. Uncertainty for the insurance companies and employers.
Here endeth the lesson. The solutions are political, not medical.
Stop Whining, the man said you can keep your doctor. He can stop the Oceans from rising, the sun from shining ….
So now, our soon to be retiring Dr will be paid less than before while you pay far more to support all those ‘consultants’ that will consult with your doctor how your conditions do not match the ‘never wrong’ matrix for treatment so further tests are denied. But if there is a serious problem your heirs may sue the doctor for not paying out of pocket for the test that was denied.
So is it only 83% of Doctor’s want to retire, or become shoe salesmen. I would expect more.
My wife was a physician, she retired in 2006, thank goodness. Running a solo practice barely made sense then, really doesn’t now.
As one of the private practice docs that left, I’m amazed they think that we will have 33% left in private practice. I’m seeing everyone I know in the medical field in independent practice trying to leave. To bolster Dr. Weiss’ point, private practice docs, who own their own business, work harder and more hours, and see more patients. When I went to employed work, I no longer took calls at night, I no longer stayed late because one of “my” patients needed me, and I do paperwork that is required during my work day, when I should be seeing patients, rather than on my own time. This is the difference. It’s going to translate into far fewer patients being able to access the “free care” they were promised. And if you think you can still access care in the emergency room, that’s where I am! The waiting line starts WAAAYYYY over there.
fyi, in case you don’t aleady know.
Fascists hate individual practioners and small business operators. GE is easy to control. One neck to wring. And when you are the federal government, GE is a pip squeek. They jump when the mighty bureaucrats fart, if they even need to do that…since politial favors have a tendency to keep the big-time fascist businesses quite content. This has been proven over and over.
The government fascists can, of course, strangle the little guys at will as well, but there’s a problem. There are millions of little guys so it becomes a logistics issue. Some of you are running amok at any point in time, and they don’t like that.
In addition, independent operators sort of get used to being, you know, independent. That is the worst possible nightmare for the fascists.
So there won’t be any independnt doctors within a few short years. You can count on that.
(actually, this is petty much a truism for big government all over the map. Anything with independence and autonomy is a problem. It’s the root of the incessant attacks on religions, families, the BBB, THE STATES, the boy scouts, bloggers, et al. Freedom, in any form must be suppressed, by the nature of the beast.)
To be honest, I’m not interested in who knows the most about healthcare. Doctors are too invested for my taste. Their judgement is as suspect as everybody elses.
Here is the unvarnished truth. There has been only one truly revolutionary / transformational / life-improving force for 100% of society since mankind put down the clubs and picked up the plow. Free markets.
You don’t need to know anything else on any topic that is economic…and they all are.
Before free markets (9,700 years approximately)…oxen, walking, 97% of people tilled the soil, lived in hovels, didn’t have running water, died at an average age of 45. After free markets (about 230 years)…rocket ships, automobiles, 10,000 choices in the supermarkets, 1% of the population grow the food for everyone else, 2500 ft air conditioned mansions for anybody who troubles themselves to work, lifespans approaching 100, cable TV, iphones, computers, automobiles, the internet, and on and on. And it ain’t government. As a matter of fact, the government ENFORCED the hovels, and the only reason they have gone away is because the American Revolution put the government in a cage for a couple of hundred years. Well the beast is out again, and lying its head off 24 hours a day on every form of communication your taxes can afford.
You do the math.
Here’s the REAL choice in 2012….hovels or iphones cubed. Because if the criminals win, within a generation, you will be living in government hovels, and there won’t be any iphones except for your bureaucratic masters.
Your choice.
Amen, weo!!! I’m not quite so quick to dismiss the opinions of private practice docs, but the free market absolutely holds the solution to the “problem”.
I won’t argue. You give me a free market to set my prices, and I’ll compete with anyone. I’m good at what I do! I can’t do it where the government sets the prices, and sets the regulations and the punishments with no understanding of how medicine actually works.
If the docs who have posted here along with Dr Weiss are correct that
we will have a doctor shortage due to retirement and not wanting to
practice medicine when Obamacare is the law of the land, where will we
get the docs to see the millions of patients who need help?
My guess is that Obama will open the floodgates to foreign docs who
will come here to practice. You might get assigned a doc who is not
fluent in English and will prescribe the wrong tests for your condition
and interpret them incorrectly.
Another guess is that Mexico will become a center of medical excellence
as the “good doctors” will open clinics in border towns so they can
practice the way they did before Obama wrecked medicine in the United
States.
that, and the standards for doctors will be “affirmative action” standards on steroids.
You health will be in the hands of people who couldn’t get a job at Walmart in 2004.
Minor correction: It will be impossible to order the wrong tests, because the tests will be prescribed by the O’care menu of allowables. Much is already out of the physicians’ hands. The remainder will be taken away. Note the Canadian colonoscopy story elsewhere in the comments.
This is precisely what has happened in the United Kingdom under the National Health Service.
Obviously in that mixed payment system, HRH The Queen has a private Harley Street physician who speaks English and went to good universities.
The poor blighters on NHS, take what’s given to them, and they better not complain otherwise they will be labeled anti-social and denied care (yes, they can do that).
Ontario went the other way: it is notoriously difficult for an out of province trained physician to get either a medical license or a billing number. I knew a chest surgeon who got out of Yugoslavia at the start of the civil war there in 1991 who had advanced medical training from some of the best places in the USA and Germany. He was unable to get an Ontario medical license because he “lacked Canadian experience”, the Canadian body of a resident in Niagara Falls, Ontario being so much different–a different species in fact–that then human body of a resident of Niagara Falls, NY.
Most of the technicians who treated me at one of Toronto’s bigger hospitals had been MD cardiologists in Europe.
My two cents as a physician in the NYC area, watching the rapid reorganization of medicine; my primary care colleagues who are still in practice are moving to a concierge-only model and dropping Medicare. The specialists also leaving Medicare, long left Medicaid and will likely be fee-for-service. An influx of sub-optimally trained 3rd worlders is inevitable, as occurred in Britain but will still take years to accomplish. In the meantime, those advanced in their careers will retire early if they can afford it and most care will be administered by nurse practitioners and physician assistants; this is not a nock and often suffices for mundane issues but mortality/morbidity rates from missed diagnoses will skyrocket.. This model will have to do in the exurbs and rural areas apart from locus tenens physicians who will intermittently fly in to clean up ‘messes’.. The US Public Health Service has been massively expanded and will be the means that ObamaKare sends the unwilling to the hinterlands, a career dead-end for many graduates burdened by massive debt and few options in major cities beyond serfdom for hospitals or large mega-practices. As this option becomes apparent to more and more, fewer will enter med school in the first place and B Hussein Obama and his Statist minions will have managed to lay waste to yet another segment of American society. A equality of mediocrity, except if you’re really wealthy and can afford to pay cash on e barrelhead,
A couple of points:
1. As pointed out, pediatricians do not do tonsillectomies.
2. A tonsillectomy is currently the treatment of last resort. Reserved for children who have failed medical therapy and/or have sleep apnea. Yet this same clown professes to know how to regulate medicine.
3. Obama got a virtual colonoscopy which currently is not approved for the peons by CMS.
4. There has been NO free market in medicine since the government intruded into medicine in the ’60s with medicare and medicaid. Thus thus the elevated costs. Actually the problem began in the forties when tax law started favoring employee insurance coverage. But that’s another story.
5. Hospitals will go bankrupt starting in 2014 if Obamacare stands. Why? Because all the people who got their care with private physicians will now be cut loose and will start crowding ERs. However hospitals will not be reimbursed at a level to compensate for that kind of costly care.
6. Innovation in medicine will cease in this country. Why? Because it is profit driven. It takes a lot of capital to develop an new drug or device. With the medical device tax the companies in the US are already pulling up stakes. Way to kill one of our few remaining industries.
You’re right about the pernicious effects of US tax law in the 1940s, which encouraged employer-paid medical benefits in place of pay increases, and which caused the mushrooming growth of our insurance bureaucracy.
The upshot was that anybody who became too costly in medical insurance premiums risked being fired (all the more so nowadays, thanks to the healthcare bubble of the past four decades). That means they lost not only their employer-paid medical coverage, but also their employment itself and their entire family’s livelihood.
I regard even private insurance or, indeed, any form of third-party payment, to be a form of socialized medicine.
The US has already slid too far down the socialized medicine slippery slope
Of all professionals, I have the highest regard for medical doctors; their selection and training and responsibilities are the most rigorous.
Obama obviously knows nothing about medicine (or anything else for that matter), he throws out socialist dictums…and shows his ignorance.
What Obamacare does is move medical decisions from a physician to an unaccountable, cold, uncaring, remote monolithic bureaucracy.
Sure Medicare has been cut back and older citizens left to die; after all, retired folk are out of the workforce and not paying nearly as much taxes. They are collecting, not paying in; the sooner the government is rid of ‘em, the better! Socialism is not about kindness or altruism, it’s about control.
I’ll trust my doctors and even my private insurers long before I’ll rely on government.
And by the way, who was the ONLY U.S. president to ever threaten to withold Social Security payments? If you answered Barrak Hussein Obama go directly to the voting booth…
More and more patients are being seen by nurse practitioners and physician assistants and NOT their primary care/specialist physicians ALREADY. And I work for a world renowned hospital. Oh and the quality of nurses has gone downhill as well. The ‘paperless’ paperwork pushed by the desk set is at an all time high. Never seen so much real paper when printing out electronic medical records for transfers/discharges etc..yes they DO have to be printed. The actual EMR charting is another story–the bad outweighs the good in my humble opinion and in the wrong hands…Lord have mercy!! Can’t wait to get out of healthcare as well. ASAP if Obamacare stands. Thanks for a great article doc. Godspeed:) ~RN 30+yrs
I hold respect to all physicians who still care. This is not directed at you but at the author of this article and those like him.
“Dr.” Weiss,and I use the term loosely since it appears profits is your main issue. While I despise Obamacare almost as much as you do, at least someone is doing something to reign in Physicians “gone wild”.
I’ll start with my husbands medical experience. Back some years ago, with great insurance, he was severely injured. His orthopedic physician “felt” he was faking and called in a Psychiatrist. He released him from hospital care, and his, paralyzed. I had to BEG our family Doctor to do something that he knew my husband and he wasn’t faking. He “took pity” and ran the simple tests that should have been ran instead of psych tests. A completely occluded spinal cord in the Thoracic was the cause of his paralysis. If this had been looked into earlier, he might be walking today, but this chance was taken from him because of your ego. For destroying his life, all my husband wanted was for you to say I’m sorry, but he couldn’t even get that. Now his life is destroyed because of your ego. Can’t do a med mal because you need another Doctor, but you know all about the Doctors “boys club”. No matter what you won’t stand against another.
My injuries were just as bad, but with even better insurance. I was subjected to heart issues that should have been taken care of, but because I’m a woman, I was laughed at, again because of a Physicians ego and profit margin. After 10 years of begging for something to be done, I finally found a Doctor to take me serious. It was too late by then to repair the damage. I won’t go into my paralysis that happened similar to my husbands.
So here are just two patients seriously damaged by a Doctors ego and profit margin.
When we lose our insurance, we will be in the same position as my sister and niece. Because they can’t afford insurance, they must pay the $150 cash for your office visit. They can’t afford that either so you sent them a letter telling them they are no longer welcomed to see you, or ANYONE, in your practice. You made it VERY clear you do NOT take Welfare.
Again, a Doctor that is profit driven with the better than thou attitude.
Dr. Weiss, I don’t give Doctors the free pass you do, simply because they ARE a physician. Care left the position and profit took it’s place.
Again, not all physicians are as uncaring as you are. I have found one who REALLY cares about his patients.
I just want to know one thing. BESIDES tort reform, which I’m sure you’re chomping at the bit for, what are your ideas to reform health care?
I wish I was like my cousin. They don’t believe in health insurance. Her and her husband have 5 kids and paid in CASH for the birth of all of them. Two even needed NICU for months. Unfortunately, I can never again be in that position thanks to a profit driven physician.
Yours is a sad story. But if you think about it, you’ll come up with a very good reason why doctors don’t “apologize” which is tantamout to admitting malpractice.
Without judging the guilt of anyone involved in your case, it’s important to understand that the profit motive is very important to doctors, as well as nurses, administrators, insurance companies. Without the incentives to make money, there will be NO doctors, NO nurses, NO hospitals. If you want to go back to the middle ages, take away the profit motive, and start the long wait for those highly trained, skilled people to help you for reasons that have nothing to do with them.
I think you are sadly mistaken if you believe that a government controlled healthcare system will be more compassionate than private physicians. I might add that profit will not leave the healthcare system with ‘single payer’ control…. people like Obama, George Soros, Michale Moore, George Clooney (and all the other Hollywood superstars that have made millions for doing nothing) will be able to pay their own way in the medical system. They won’t have to rely on a committee to determine whether or not your cancer is treated; they will pay for it.
Russia has socialized medicine. I’m told from someone who grew up there that if you need a good physician; you ‘pay under the table’ for him; otherwise you risk life and limb and go to a ‘government dr.”.
We do not live in a perfect world; but the US healthcare systems IS the best in the world. Don’t allow this government to destroy it; help those that want to make it better in the free Market do so.
Bridget, you are completely correct. My American family doctor was trained under the old Soviet system. And in the 1990′s, I knew an eye surgeon in Toronto, Canada (who had to completely retrain to get a license), who had first trained and practiced in the former Soviet Union.
I have discussed this subject with them at length.
No, you don’t take care of anyone. Nurses take care of those people. You write prescriptions, It’s very, very different.
Worried about physicians who are closing their practices because of the unrestrained attack on private medicine? Obama’s promised you that ‘you can keep your Dr.!!” Not, of course, if your Dr. is no longer in practice because he simply could not stand the government control which is making it impossible for him to survive financially…. you won’t keep him then.
But no worry…… I have a sneaky feeling that our Prez’ answer will be the replacement by foreign physicians brought into the US…..who will work for much less and follow the dictates of the federal committees that will control your lives. I worked at a major medical school in the US, one with an outstanding reputation for medical care…. Diversity inclusiveness set aside (and let us please do just that)…. The selection of new interns each year was done from American Medical Schools, not foreign ones. Reason? The quality of the medical education in these foreign universities was substandard….. really. It doesn’t matter what race you are, or what country you were born in; WHERE you go to medical school, does matter. Now that might not be politically correect; but frankly it is true.
The US has the best medical schools in the entire world, bar none. If I am right about this, then the Democrat Progressives/Obama followers will dumb down our healthcare system to the lowest common denominator….just like they have already done with our public schools.
Ask Obama and the Congress where they will go for medical care.
Bridget, I completely agree with you. Elitism of any kind is not to be tolerated. Outcome must be equalized. And there is no elitism like medical elitism…that’s what makes the very good MD’s into GREAT MD’s.
However, as a “new American” of middle age (there is a “5″ in front) I still believe in the exceptionalism of the American people. There is a tangible difference in culture between America and every other place I’ve lived or visited. That’s why it took me more than half a lifetime to come here and become a citizen. And that’s why I deliberately chose to live in a very red state.
A physician friend works for our local HMO in a small, primary-care satellite clinic. The HMO informed its doctors that each of them would be taking on 50 new Medicaid patients from its newly-established insurance program catered specifically to Medicaid patients. In the past month, my friend has obtained 315 new medicaid patients, as opposed to the 50 he was told about previously. His paying patients are leaving his practice in droves…”too many tattoos, too much cursing” in the waiting room. His established patients “don’t feel safe”. The HMO has been informed of the situation, but we know very well that nothing will be done. The face of medicine is changing, and it isn’t for the better, my friends.