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This and I don't think people realize how many people don't pay their medical bills.
Besides destroying my rental house a couple of months ago, my last rental tenants left my house and yard scattered with trash and old unpaid bills. One letter was from a collection agency to the tenants for over $4,000, at least on one bill, in unpaid medical expenses at the local medical center.
I have heard that many of these small town medical centers will not survive under Obamacare.
Many people say they want their medical costs to go down, and that the doctors are greedy for their high pay. When you have low paid doctors (and add in a dose of corruption), you could get a nice health care system such as Romania. Think if they start trying to rein in compensation other docs will start their own informal systems?
I don't think it's doctor's wages that need re-asessed. In fact, their malpractice insurance premiums are so high that it wouldn't surprise me if their actual net salaries are comparatively less than decades ago.
I have nieces who are nurses and their wages are up to $70 an hour!!! This is a bullcrap as far as I'm concerned, and I think the rest of the medical field needs probed.
As left wing as I am, I also realize that doctors have to pay up the arse for malpractice insurance, they have to write off a lot of debts and many have hefty student loans. While I think they could earn a little less, I don't think doctors salaries are the root cause of why healthcare is so expensive in the US. I lay more blame on the insurance companies for that.
As left wing as I am, I also realize that doctors have to pay up the arse for malpractice insurance, they have to write off a lot of debts and many have hefty student loans. While I think they could earn a little less, I don't think doctors salaries are the root cause of why healthcare is so expensive in the US. I lay more blame on the insurance companies for that.
And having worked 30 years in the insurance field as a ratemaker, policy analyst, and compliance officer, I can tell you that you are dead on correct!
Profit works well in a lot of areas as a motivator for doing things better for customers. It is just the opposite in the health field. Profit is a de-motivator with regard to taking care of sick people. The mission of health insurers is to provide profit for shareholders and bonuses to executives. They want to provide just enough health care to their customers to get by, but never enough to threaten their profit margin.
If the justification of high payments to doctors is to compensate them for many years of education and high malpractice rates, then address those two issues.
Most doctors specialize, so why do they need so much education? I go to an ortho, who would not consider providing gyno advice. Limit their educational requirements to their specialties.
Also, most doctors are small businesses and pay individual malpractice premiums. Reward doctors for forming large practices, and have the practice be the insured rather than the individuals.
If the justification of high payments to doctors is to compensate them for many years of education and high malpractice rates, then address those two issues.
Most doctors specialize, so why do they need so much education? I go to an ortho, who would not consider providing gyno advice. Limit their educational requirements to their specialties.
Also, most doctors are small businesses and pay individual malpractice premiums. Reward doctors for forming large practices, and have the practice be the insured rather than the individuals.
The basic medical education contains information every doctor needs to know. An orthopedist has to be aware of how a patient's other medical conditions affect his orthopedic condition.
Doctors in groups have to buy liability insurance that protects themselves individually and the group.
Why would we need unaffordable health care? If an average income earners cannot afford health care, if medical bills are #1 cause of bankruptcies, what's the point of it all? Just a week ago I was ripped off yet by another doctor who did NOTHING I couldn't do myself for my uninsured relative, I can smile, I can talk trivial BS, I can double charge $355 per visit + rip off people on a trivial blood test. All those pleasures cost me $500 total per visit, USELESS visit, no diagnosis, lots of BS. I'm so angry, I just want to smack those beatches who charged me double of what they charge an insured patient (because health insurance vultures keep their appetites in check). I'll try to reason with them on Monday, if not they will not get those $500 so easily. So how those illegals get free health care as talk bozos radio claim?
Seriously, if it's the jungle law and insane prices all round, these unjust monopoly of the medical profession on prescriptions and licensures should end. If you don't give a dime where somebody lives, dies or go bankrupt, there is no good reason to grant you a monopoly over life and death. Those who can afford you still would use your overpriced services, those who cannot afford you should have other options.
Last edited by RememberMee; 01-05-2013 at 12:29 PM..
Why would we need unaffordable health care? If an average income earners cannot afford health care, if medical bills are #1 cause of bankruptcies, what's the point of it all? Just a week ago I was ripped off yet by another doctor who did NOTHING I couldn't do myself for my uninsured relative, I can smile, I can talk trivial BS, I can double charge $355 per visit + rip off people on a trivial blood test. All those pleasures cost me $500 total per visit, USELESS visit, no diagnosis, lots of BS. I'm so angry, I just want to smack those beatches who charged me double of what they charge an insured patient (because health insurance vultures keep their appetites in check). I'll try to reason with them on Monday, if not they will not get those $500 so easily. So how those illegals get free health care as talk bozos radio claim?
Seriously, if it's the jungle law and insane prices all round, these unjust monopoly of the medical profession on prescriptions and licensures should end. If you don't give a dime where somebody lives, dies or go bankrupt, there is no good reason to grant you a monopoly over life and death. Those who can afford you still would use your overpriced services, those who cannot afford you should have other options.
You keep complaining about charges for your "relative" but you do not tell us what the charges were for. Do you have an itemized bill? Also, the amount appears to have increased from $433 to $500.
You consider the visit "useless" because there was no diagnosis and no prescription. Is the doctor waiting on test results in order to make a diagnosis? Perhaps there is no diagnosis. Many people have symptoms for which there is no single diagnosis. fatigue, for example, is one of them. Why did your relative need to see a doctor? Also, just because a test result is normal just not mean it was "trivial." You do not know before you have it done whether the results will be normal or abnormal. Because you did not like what the doctor said does not mean that your relative did not need to hear it.
The first visit to a new doctor commonly takes longer, as more information needs to be collected, and there are administrative expenses incurred in getting the patient into the records system. That is the reason the fee for the first visit to any doctor is usually higher.
The "insurance vultures" do not keep fees in check. They pretty much use extortion to keep reimbursement low and every reason they can think of to refuse to pay for anything.
Do you have insurance? If so, you can thank yourself for subsidizing the amount paid for your relative with the lower fee negotiated by your insurance company.
I will personally keep the current education system and licensure, without which any bozo could hang out a shingle and "treat" patients.
Many people say they want their medical costs to go down, and that the doctors are greedy for their high pay. When you have low paid doctors (and add in a dose of corruption), you could get a nice health care system such as Romania. Think if they start trying to rein in compensation other docs will start their own informal systems?
Dr. Vasile Astarastoae, a biomedical ethicist who is president of the Romanian College of Physicians, which represents 47,000 doctors, blamed a pitifully low average monthly wage of about $510 for doctors for the bribe-taking.
“Patients don’t want to go to a doctor who is distracted thinking, ‘How will I feed my kids or pay the rent?’ ” Dr. Astarastoae said. “So there is a conspiracy between the doctor and the patient to pay a bribe.”
Sounds like a like an odd theory to me. One of the biggest wastes in health care is prescribing drugs that cost hundreds a month, that may not do anything, or may cause another condition that requires pills, or an operation or procedure of some sort. Or maybe causes death & lawsuit of both Doc & Pill co.
Also, the Family Physician who does not have his own practice does OK generally, but may not make much more than some in many other professions. I mentioned rich doctors to my family physician & he said as a salaried doctor at a small clinic, He doubted he would get $100,000 a year in his lifetime.
The big hospital chain owners take in megabillions or trillions, for not doing much. I used a room at a hospital for half an hour. The doctor charged $300 for the procedure, but the 1/2 hour room rental was $1,000!!! If it were always in use at that rate (24/7) that would be $1.5 million a month! Made me think if a Dr. could bring the equipment to a house it would be so much cheaper.
I met a nurse who worked for a huge chain of hospitals & clinics. She said she was getting over $40 an hour, & that was about a decade ago.
A man on a forum said cannabis stopped his mom's seizures, after 25 prescription pills failed. Pharmacies sold cannabis until 1937, including cannabis in oil form. Cancer was rare then. Now we have a cancer epidemic. Lately, there are anecdotal reports of people using cannabis oil to cure cancer & other sometimes fatal illnesses.
But instead of that cheap bottle of cannabis oil, people get cutting, burning, & poison torture treatment that has about a 0% survival rate after 10 years, for a mere few hundred thousand. "Treatment" kills some even faster than the cancer would. But the safe & effective treatment is good for up to 100 years in prison, in places like Oklahoma. Big Pharma gives most in Congress $100,000-$500,000 a year.
A person make have a psychiatric problem, so they're given a pill that probably won't adequately help, but causes weight gain. The weight gain causes diabetes, so they get a pill for that. Again, probably doesn't help, but may give them arthritis. A popular arthritis drug, Celebrex, did not have real serious warnings at first. Now the new TV ad for it says it can cause 4 conditions that are sometimes fatal.
In the US, I read family physicians will begin receiving double the previous low Medicaid reimbursements.
They need it to pay back their student loans, or nearly all would choose to become specialists.
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and I don't think people realize how many people don't pay their medical bills.
