And Medicaid is drying up: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/health/policy/16medicaid.html Also, in talking to doctors thru our company, many will no longer take Medicare/Medicaid/OHP as it pays so very little, it's a drain on their practices. I hope when all the insurance companies are gone in 6 to 8 years, the single payer Obamacare plan pays more than Medicare/Medicaid, or care will be hard to find at all.
Gosh, some doctors may have to sell off a piece or 2 of their exotic car collections in order to afford that family vacation compound in Fiji. Seriously, I've never met a doctor who wasn't obscenely wealthy in comparison to his patients, and I'm sure I never will. If the time ever comes when Americans consider themselves above that sort of non-rewarding demeaning work, I'm sure our massive labor force of illegal aliens will step in and take their place willingly for less money.
Consider the source:...Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com. The California-based company sells coverage from 185 health insurance carriers in 50 states...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100....html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond Medical Schools Can't Keep Up As Ranks of Insured Expand, Nation Faces Shortage of 150,000 Doctors in 15 Years The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors. Experts warn there won't be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000. The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient.
Hmm, a large number of high-paying jobs created indirectly by a government program. Who would'a thunk it? barfo
Sweet. The government could also make a large number of high-paying hole-digging jobs too. Let's do it!
So your point is that doctoring and hole digging are equivalent, i.e. useless? If so, interesting point. barfo
My point was, "what's your point"? Government created, high-paying jobs is easy to do, and we could do it any time we want. That doesn't mean it is a good thing. Maybe you weren't implying that these government created high-paying jobs were a good thing, but that is how it came across.
I can introduce you to at least two who are friends of the family. They actually cannot do their own lab work now, since the basic cost of owning and operating the machines is not covered by the insurance payments to them (which come 4-6 months later). So they outsource it to companies who can use economies of scale to drive the price down a bit--which means patients wait longer for test results, diagnoses, etc. Does it cost less for an illegal immigrant to treat a patient than a licensed doctor? Maybe, I don't know. What I do know is that, unless your definition of "obscenely wealthy" includes those making well less than some of their patients, perhaps there are people you should meet. On a side note, out of pure curiosity, what sizes are the practices/hospitals that you go to in Central Oregon? Is it more the 3-4 doc general practice? Hospital-based clinicians? Family docs you can negotiate and barter with?
I'm intrigued that there will be many more openings for physicians...but isn't there already a shortage? (I don't really know--that was a legit question) It was my (perhaps wholly uninformed) understanding that, with increases in medical school costs and workload-v.-reward (pay) issues that have been brought up over the last 10-20 years, that there were far fewer docs coming into the workforce. What's going to change to reverse that trend? Higher workload for less pay? Seems like the cost-benefit analysis for someone looking to spend ~7 years in school may be better served becoming an engineer with a joint B.S./M.S and an MBA. Then again, maybe there's a chance that there are more nurses that are able to practice. I don't know.
All good questions. I just wish there was someway for us to know what things would be like in a country with government health care.
Oh, you mean like the other countries that have it, that have less quality healthcare than our country? There are lots of data points. You should try not to ignore them.
You shouldn't be angry and blame others because you live in one of the poorest parts of the state (Lapine). You're opinion is nowhere near reality.
