Oh, My: Survey Says — 75% of Doctors to Drop Medicare Home - by Cardigan - June 16, 2012 - 10:00 America/New_York - 11 Comments Doug Ross I’ll be interested in seeing how President Axelrod spins this news. The Doctor Patient Medical Association just completed a survey on doctors’ attitudes about the future of American medicine. The key findings included: • 90% say the medical system is on the WRONG TRACK • 83% say they are thinking about QUITTING • 61% say the system challenges their ETHICS • 85% say the patient-physician relationship is in a TAILSPIN • 65% say GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT is most to blame for current problems
Jo'Co, I am not as eloquent as you, but I can tell you that doctors have had as big a hand in this fiasco as anyone else. All that stuff is true. I DID quit. Government involvement is a huge problem. But you can't have your ethics challenged unless you are unethical. The patient-physician relationship is in a tailspin but some of that is physicians fault. I somehow believe that doctors could have done more to fight all these things...and they did not, to our shame. And doctors have been threatening to drop Medicare since I started practice in 1981. Won't happen.
:idea: Thanks Stu, your input on these matters helps the rest of us understand the problem from all sides. I was hoping that you would respond to that.
Doctors were delighted to accept the concept of third party payment because they didn't have to chase payment from patients...but it did away with the concept of folks being responsible for their own bills...their own care...their own decisions. Now doctors are complaining about all of the bureaucratic nightmares that this has (of course) produced. Meanwhile all of the patients have naturally come around to the feeling that they are owed all the best of everything as a right, and somebody else should be paying for all of it. I wish I knew the answer. I do believe that insurance should be separated from employment...at least to the point where once you have insurance you should be able to continue it and not fear losing it, regardless of whether you get sick, lose your job, change your job, etc.
Stu Another big problem is that the physicians (as have insurance defense lawyers) have lost control of thier professional decision making. Now the tests that are run or the studies ordered are part of a protocol that the third party payors will pay for. Maybe it's just me but when I walk into a doctor's office I'm really irritated by how the process goes. First, you never hear anything friendly like "How are you" or "what seems to be the problem" or "how can we help you?" Instead it's "may I see your insurance card and ID." Then you wait until you get the privilege of sitting in a room for another half hour. I've represented doctors for years. How do you think that they'd feel if when they first walked into our office, someone asked to look at their wallet to see if they could pay for legal services? If someone has an appointment for 2 PM, I try to be available to meet with them at 2PM. I don't make them sit in the lobby reading 6 month old magazines for 45 min. waiting for my arrival.
90% say the medical system is on the WRONG TRACK • 83% say they are thinking about QUITTING • 61% say the system challenges their ETHICS • 85% say the patient-physician relationship is in a TAILSPIN My wife now hates her profession...nursing....because of all of the above. So....without a national healthcare plan how can we get the Rick Scott type 3rd party rip-off companies to get their greedy little filthy hands out of this huge mess?
:idea: That's a good presentation Stu. We could have had a national health care plan that most Americans could agree on. The great failure of Obamacare was that it was European-style socialism rammed down the throats of the people who were generally happy with their current system and who just wanted a few tweeks. The Lefties had a golden chance to tweek the system to their way of thinking, but instead they went for the whole Marxist ball of wax and now they're going to get nothing...