Comments on: Healthcare: A Presidential Priority?

By: Cris

Cris — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:52:18 +0000

The majority of doctors leave medical school and residency burdened with large student loans and credit card debt. Naturally they want a specialty that will allow them to pay off their debts and earn enough to save for a retirement and family. Is it any surprise that they don’t want to do primary care? Its not even that primary care doctors train just as long as many specialists to earn as much as some nurses, but then as a final reward, insurance companies refuse to pay them, and that practice is led by medicare. On the other side are the lawyers, desperate to make money however they can and eager to manipulate the system however possilble. Finally we have the patient, who has evolved into the most demanding, uncompassionate and unappreciative individual imaginable. I think of my profession very differently now. I want to protect myself from lawyers, I need to document everything to the last letter to avoid lawsuits and keep medical records for years to make it easier for them to sue me. I need to be cautious with patients, many of them are drug seeking or worse yet drug dealers and are looking for ways to get opiates to then resell them. I need to be cautious with nurses, any mistake they make, I will be sued for. (nurses after all don’t have enough to satify a lawyers hungry appetite). I need to fight to get paid since the goverment and other private insurance companies do everything possible to try to keep from paying me what I am owed. And the ironic part is that I don’t make a lot. Primary care doctors have not gotten a pay increase in over ten years. Just last year, medicare was proposing a 10% paycut, yes 10%. Now, its not like anything has gotten cheaper in the meantime. Some physicians got lucky, the ones who are retiring! As for the rest of us, we are totally screwed.

By: MSmith

MSmith — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:18:48 +0000

I appreciate your take on the healthcare issue. During the Presidential Debates the focus was on the bad and evil insurance companies. While they are part of the problem, so are doctor’s salaries, hospital cost, medication costs, lawsuits, and general greed.

BTW…I would also add that the nursing profession could use help with patient ratio’s and being allowed to do what they do best. Patient Care.

By: simonsez

simonsez — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:41:51 +0000

The biased media has helped support a loss of the government proposed by the constitution. American people were herded like sheep to their slaughter. Now they will have to pay the heavy price of their naivety.

The increased cost proposed via tax burden and other suggestions will result in my making a decision like many others will be forced to deal with. As a physician, increased bureaucracy, red tape, hungry lawyers, etc. have forced me to practice a type of medicine which is not of the same quality which I was taught.

Obama discussed in his plan the need to computerize all medical records. My practice can’t afford to do this without consequences. I would actually have to hire more staff to accomplish this. As I see it, I have two choices. Cash only service vs. closing the practice. I am leaning toward the later. This would mean a loss of 5-6 additional jobs. 20,000 people without care forced to try to get follow up in a system that has a 3 month waiting time for new patients.

Physicians are small businesses that Obama’s plans will effect directly. They are a group of independent thinkers and strongly entrepreneurial. Unless tort reform would be undertaken reducing malpractice insurance, the writing is on the wall. Over the last several decades, Canadian physicians have been moving to the US. Now the US is moving towards providing care similarly to other socialized countries. The exodus of physicians from the USA will now begin. Mark my words, rationed health care is not far behind.

Similar actions will occur across other business sectors. God bless those who voted for radical change as that is what they will receive.

By: Roy Bishop MD

Roy Bishop MD — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 04:02:22 +0000

I see nothing about the crisis in primary care where the majority of day to day healthcare occurs and is delivered most cost effectively. Primary Care doctors are being driven out of business by low reimbursements from insurers and Medicare discoruaging US grads from medical schools going into the field just when we need more PCPs than ever. Without making primary care attractive and economically viable whatever healthcare reform that is planned will fail. In Massachussetts the State delivered universal care and then found there were no space PCPs to see the newly insured 200,000 patients, try that on a national scale with 50 million new patients.

By: Oldsurfer

Oldsurfer — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:28:26 +0000

Obama and the Democrats envision a national health system like that in Canada and they will probably get it within the next 4 years, especially if they can get a super majority in Congress. Once enacted it will never be repealed, so I have just come to accept its inevitablility.

What is a wonder to me is why haven’t the Republicans come up with, and implemented some healthcare plan that would have saved choice and reformed the present system. Why have we waited so long to come up with a viable healthcare system that meets most Americans needs and budgets. The insurance companies have done nothing, the politicans have done nothing, the doctors and other health professionals have done nothing. Since we have all done nothing, the Democrats are going to come along and do something. Which is inititate a single payer national health care system.

I don’t know about you but my doctor lives in a huge house in an exclusive neighborhood, drives a Mercedes, has a big boat, owns a house on the beach in Nicaragua and a cabin in the Smoky Mountains and is always complaining about how he is barely making it because of malpractice insurance. Remember when the doctor actually lived a lot like the rest of us. Maybe had a little better lifestyle but didn’t live like the royalty of today.

By: James Clerici

James Clerici — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:58:39 +0000

You want to control costs, what about controlling lawyers.

By: Victoria Bloomfield

Victoria Bloomfield — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:38:37 +0000

Nothing is free people, for your information, and I have first hand experience (Canada) your taxes will go through the roof and you will wait several years for an operation you need. If you need the operation bad enough, Canadians pay out of their own pockets and get the operation in the USA!

By: Victoria Bloomfield

Victoria Bloomfield — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:34:49 +0000

I am now a citizen of the USA, born in Canada. Don’t believe all you hear about free Healthcare, nothing is free, your taxes will go through the roof and the Healthcare is terrible. Do you want to wait at least wait two years for an operation that you need? Socialistic anything does not work people!

By: Roger

Roger — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:31:35 +0000

It amazes me that so many people buy into this hype. Talk to a 20 year military veteran about the health care for free for life that they were promised by the government. Then came the politicians, they said instead of spending the money on the retirees, we can have more for pork barrel projects. They were sued and Congress said we didn’t authorize the military recruiters to make that promise. It was printed in all the military propaganda by the department of defense. printed by the government printing office at taxpayer expense. But now the veteran retiree is on a fixed income and being required to pay for medicare part B and also pay a copay for thier free medical care for life. What makes anyone think that after thier breech of contract with the military, they are going to give up the money to pay for universal health care? The pork barrels need that money, not the american people.

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:54:37 +0000

Amend to that! The last thing we need is for the government to get involved in the health care service! I do not need the government telling me which doctor I can or can’t go to or what treatments I can or can’t have.