A doc from our hospital recently attended a political event where he met a prominent U.S. senator. He asked the senator what his feelings were about physicians' decreasing reimbursements (often less than 30% of charges - e.g. I get 9$(!) from certain payors for a pap smear, no sh#t.); increasing insurance costs (over $100,000/year after tax for certain specialties); and caps on malpractice damages. The senator replied, smugly: "Well, maybe you can sell one of your houses." Again, no sh#t.
You will be shocked (shocked, I say) to learn 3 things about this senator:
1. He is a Democrat. (no!)
2. He is one of the wealthiest lawmakers in Washington. (you don't say!)
3. A list of his donors reads like a who's who of elite law firms. (I would never have guessed that!)
To sum up: You are a rich doctor, so f*ck you.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
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i only have five houses and parting with any one of them will cause me to have to fire at least three butlers and a maid. it will also prohibit me from being in cabo san lucas for the summer solstice which will be really hard for me. muffy will be so disappointed.
ReplyDeleteDude, you gotta name names.
ReplyDeleteWho benefits from keeping this guy anonymous?
Flea
I pause at naming names because this is second-hand information. You can probably guess who it is. Surprise! He's from New England!
ReplyDeletesounds like our old friend, the alcoholic prince regent of massachussetts teddy kennedy. actually met the guy in aspen on new years eve 1988 at the paradise club. surprise, he was drunk. other surprise, he tried to pick up my friend's date. final surprise, he and eddie van halen, who was playing with fleetweood mac there that night, partied all night long in a limo and then managed to pull my friend's date onto the slopes with them the next day. how many houses does he own? wasn't he the guy that killed mary joe koepeckni? bet he has the best doctors and the best health plan available to humans on the planet. screw him.
ReplyDeleteThe moonbats you save in the ER keep voting for that trash. You get what you save(deserve). %)
ReplyDeleteanother thing. as i have flogged this topic to death in previous posts i will quickly summarize here. if doctors see only declining reimbursements then medical school applications will drop. people will not choose to go through four years of school and up to ten years at minimum wage with sleep deprivation and a POST TRAINING DEBT APPROACHING $300,000 to become doctors. wanna be a cardio thoracic surgeon? no one else does. as of today you can, with an MD in hand, get almost any residency slot in the country. they are not filling them. mark my words, the crisis in health care will soon become a lack of physicians and certainly a lack of quality physicians. call us selfish, but most of us want to have a life outside medicine. in my town of 300,000 we have no pediatric surgeon, no neurosurgeon, no trauma surgeons, and, to top it off, the only trauma referral center within helicopter distance, will start, in three months, to go on LEVEL ONE TRAUMA DIVERT. this means that if you are near death from a car crash while they are on divert you will die. thanks senator. and oh, by the way, i do labor under the belief that if anyone deserves to get paid well for what we do that it is physicians. athletes make what they make because it is what the market will bear. we have no market, just a shell game of cost and responsibility shifting.
ReplyDelete911 doc-you go to parties with eddie van halen? Seriously? Maybe you *should* have to give up one of your houses because I am a wee bit jealous(I am totally kidding, please don't take this as if I agree with doctors not getting paid what they deserve! I am always the first one to bring my doctors cookies and do whatever I can to let them know I appreciate everything they do.)
ReplyDeleteI find it absurd that both doctors and patients seem to be getting ripped off. After my cancer crap, we almost had to sell our house (well, ok, in all honesty I just freaked out because I like to be more comfortable with actual money in the bank just in case) because of all the bills, and yet I doubt if the doctors got what they "deserved" for saving my life even with all the money I paid. All around it seems like a bad system sometimes!
dear radioactive girl. it WAS my brush with fame. i was just out of college and worked for a trustafarian ne'er do well who had just fled aspen as the feds were close to busting him on drug charges. he still had lots of connections in aspen and invited me, the bartender at his club in another ski town. i knew very little of his past and went with him. it was my one brush with the high and mighty and i do not wish another. it's a good story though huh? i even got eddie van halen to give me a hi-five as i was one of the few guests who was dancing and listening. the club only held thre hundred. what a fantastic concert and he is the most amazing guitarist and seemed like a nice guy. valerie bertinelli was there too. those makeup guys in hollywood are magicians.
ReplyDeleteI was going to guess it was one of the "two Johns" (Kerry or Edwards), then I saw the New England comment. I do think it sounds like something Kerry would say in an unguarded moment, though.
ReplyDelete2008 elections getting closer all the time!
ReplyDeletePerhaps you docs could continue to enlighten us regarding this debacle.
Where IS all the money going??? Hospitals don't make money. Doctors salaries getting lower. Patients pay out a lot of money, even with insurance. God forbid something really catastrophic happens.
dear sea-spray,
ReplyDeleteplease see the most recent post for a faily quick synopsis of where the money is going.
cheers and thanks.
Dear 911doc:
ReplyDeleteMy condolences to Muffy:-)
The insurance companies have such sweet deals going for them --- paying out ridiculously low amounts to doctors and hospitals for medical care while charging docs enormous premiums for malpractice coverage. The insurance companies and the lawyers (with total support from -- and kickbacks to -- swinish politicians) are a huge burden on patients and health care providers alike.
ReplyDeleteSo how do we get this monkey off our backs? What exactly are we addicted to that keeps us enslaved to these bloodsuckers?
I hate to say it, but alot of the blame lies with us (the docs). For some reason, there are a ton of docs who open their mouths while being sh#t on in the name of 'compassion', 'patient care' etc... These physicians feel we should happily take it up the ass because 'it is our duty to take care of everyone no matter what the conditions'. This is certainly admirable, but extremely naive. Unfortunately, the reality is that insurers, government and the public recognize our attitude as weakness and routinely f*ck us raw. If we pulled an 'Atlas Shrugged' on these morons they would come crawling. If docs would stand up and say, 'hey, WE are the talent here, and without us you are screwed', people would listen. Guess what. Never going to happen.
ReplyDeleteagree with etotheipi but would add that we, as consumers of health care, swallowed a poison pill the minute that health care costs were separated from the requirement for payment. once the shell game started the end becaome obvious. just as when governments print money without collateral our health care system has been freed to run amok by the lack or requirement to square the tab at the end of the day.
ReplyDelete911doc: yes!!!
ReplyDeleteProven over and over and over: you remove personal responsibility and appropriate incentives, the end result is systemic collapse. QED