09-11-2008, 08:40 AM
The big issue here is government. Government has made it nearly impossible for the free market to act which in turn means more corruption and a deeper spiral.
Let me say that I have a concierge physician (and I work in Healthcare) so I can see it from both sides. Yes I pay my doctor a fairly large sum of money which allows him to see a small number of patients. This is a good thing and I'll give some reasons. Instead of going to the ER I go see him or he makes a house call, something very few people can get these days. Therefore I am cheaper to the system 1 because I pay my doctor and not the insurance company and 2 I don't use unnecessary CYA services because my doctor isn't worried about getting sued he's concerned with keeping me as healthy as possible. The state is debating about shutting him (and others like him) down because it's creating inequality. So the politicians would rather I get worse care at the expense of others to be more "equal".
Here's kind of how it works. The average family med/ internal medicine physician sees about 4 patients per hour and the bill varies depending on how in depth the service was. By in depth I mean how many of each metric he/she fills out. They get behind, lines form and everyone gets their time wasted. The make around $150k a year and around and around it goes. Let's say a concierge physician decides to go into practice for themselves and charges $1000 a patient and takes on 365 patients. This costs patients $2.73 a day and they get care not corralled like cattle. The physician ends up making more money than his/her stressed out counterpart to actually be a doctor and care for patients. What happens is that people see the potential to make money and actually be a doctor and not a paper pusher for the insurance companies. More people become doctors and some can charge $5000 per patient and some can charge $500 per patient and everything in between. So in 8 years we can begin to reverse the physician shortage, decrease demand on emergency rooms and decrease insurance premiums. The reason that insurance premiums are so high is because we insure EVERYTHING. Do you insure your car for oil changes or tire rotations? Nope and we shouldn't insure ourselves for simple doctors visits. It's the constant little BS that makes things all messed up.
The evidence that this is the way of the future is that Walmart, Target, CVS and Walgreens (to name a few) and creating quick turn around clinics in their stores to correct the problem of doctors being overworked and unable to "fit in" patients. You might say this fixes the primary care issue but not the specialist issue. The specialists aren't the ones complaining the most many of them are fine with the current system which means we should leave it alone and work on it a bit at a time.
The next push will be towards private hospitals. Since they are rare and subject to the nonsensical rules that drive the public hospitals they can't operate freely. If we let people open hospitals things will get better. You can say that they may not have the oversight that public hospitals have. I say we have laws and when they are broken the legal system has no problem extracting a penalty. So if the new local hospital wants to offer Corinthian leather furniture and 1:1 nurse staffing ratios then great. It's on THEIR dime. This will lessen the demand on public resources and free up more money for the poor. Yes the poor won't be able to get the same exact services that the rich get but then again they don't drive Porsches either.
The current system sucks and we can either let the rich pull us out of the mess or we can attempt to socialize it into compliance. Oh and if it hasn't been thought of socialized medicine won't be the great savior that people might think. We have way too many lawsuit issues that wouldn't be easily dealt with. Additionally if we go socialist the $$$$ goes down and then when the best and brightest are staring at options when graduatng with a bachelor's degree the Doctor option will likely pay less and cost more to get into. Remember there is a 4 year residency period where the money isn't great and the hours suck. How will we then propose to fix it? Spend more money in an inefficient way and the spiral will continue.
Let me say that I have a concierge physician (and I work in Healthcare) so I can see it from both sides. Yes I pay my doctor a fairly large sum of money which allows him to see a small number of patients. This is a good thing and I'll give some reasons. Instead of going to the ER I go see him or he makes a house call, something very few people can get these days. Therefore I am cheaper to the system 1 because I pay my doctor and not the insurance company and 2 I don't use unnecessary CYA services because my doctor isn't worried about getting sued he's concerned with keeping me as healthy as possible. The state is debating about shutting him (and others like him) down because it's creating inequality. So the politicians would rather I get worse care at the expense of others to be more "equal".
Here's kind of how it works. The average family med/ internal medicine physician sees about 4 patients per hour and the bill varies depending on how in depth the service was. By in depth I mean how many of each metric he/she fills out. They get behind, lines form and everyone gets their time wasted. The make around $150k a year and around and around it goes. Let's say a concierge physician decides to go into practice for themselves and charges $1000 a patient and takes on 365 patients. This costs patients $2.73 a day and they get care not corralled like cattle. The physician ends up making more money than his/her stressed out counterpart to actually be a doctor and care for patients. What happens is that people see the potential to make money and actually be a doctor and not a paper pusher for the insurance companies. More people become doctors and some can charge $5000 per patient and some can charge $500 per patient and everything in between. So in 8 years we can begin to reverse the physician shortage, decrease demand on emergency rooms and decrease insurance premiums. The reason that insurance premiums are so high is because we insure EVERYTHING. Do you insure your car for oil changes or tire rotations? Nope and we shouldn't insure ourselves for simple doctors visits. It's the constant little BS that makes things all messed up.
The evidence that this is the way of the future is that Walmart, Target, CVS and Walgreens (to name a few) and creating quick turn around clinics in their stores to correct the problem of doctors being overworked and unable to "fit in" patients. You might say this fixes the primary care issue but not the specialist issue. The specialists aren't the ones complaining the most many of them are fine with the current system which means we should leave it alone and work on it a bit at a time.
The next push will be towards private hospitals. Since they are rare and subject to the nonsensical rules that drive the public hospitals they can't operate freely. If we let people open hospitals things will get better. You can say that they may not have the oversight that public hospitals have. I say we have laws and when they are broken the legal system has no problem extracting a penalty. So if the new local hospital wants to offer Corinthian leather furniture and 1:1 nurse staffing ratios then great. It's on THEIR dime. This will lessen the demand on public resources and free up more money for the poor. Yes the poor won't be able to get the same exact services that the rich get but then again they don't drive Porsches either.
The current system sucks and we can either let the rich pull us out of the mess or we can attempt to socialize it into compliance. Oh and if it hasn't been thought of socialized medicine won't be the great savior that people might think. We have way too many lawsuit issues that wouldn't be easily dealt with. Additionally if we go socialist the $$$$ goes down and then when the best and brightest are staring at options when graduatng with a bachelor's degree the Doctor option will likely pay less and cost more to get into. Remember there is a 4 year residency period where the money isn't great and the hours suck. How will we then propose to fix it? Spend more money in an inefficient way and the spiral will continue.