It's funny how this article shows the reason why Nixon started America down the path of managed healthcare. Some excerpts from the article and the link for the full text. http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/26/health/doctors-health-care-reform/index.html And yet, the Doctor Girgis doesn't explain how she worked to make care available to both mother and child, because she didn't. There is nothing stopping her. There is nothing stopping her from offer her services at a discount to the mother out of pocket. Except her own greed. She's a doctor after all, and doesn't do anything for free or for less than she's entitled to. This goes to the first problem with doctors that they highlight over and over in their own words. They expect to be paid a ridiculous amount of money for what they do. The idea that doctor's save lives is silly. Many doctor's never save a life. Many treat colds their entire careers. Some actually kill their patients with poor practice. Pilots also save lives, so do bus drivers. Should we pay them 200k a year or more? Here's another problem or more of the same, arrogance and not wanting accountability. It's only those who can't stand to be questioned that bristle at the notion of having to explain to someone who isn't the same as you your ideas and convince them of it. You know who else isn't a trained cardiologist? 99% of most patients. If you can't explain to other doctors, cardiologists or not, and insurance bureaucrats the need for a medical procedure, how can you explain it to the common people who make up the majority of your customers? What this quote really says is Doctor Campbell wants buddies who think just like him to rubber stamp his ideas and no one can question him. If I walked onto a car lot and the car salesmen told me I must buy a Lincoln Navigator, would I just say, well your the expert? No, and neither would any of us. We would ask questions, we would push back on perhaps the reliability of the Lincoln brand or the poor mpg of the particular vehicle or whatever. We wouldn't just buy what they said we should buy in other commodity so why would let them do it here? Do insurance companies do a better job of questioning doctors on their customer's behalf? Probably more of often than not if only because they employ medical professionals who have some expertise, but at the end of the day the patient will and should have the ultimate say. This is of course the least valid of all. First of all, the market he is referring to doesn't exist for health care. Few people will refuse life saving care, as such the demand is incredly inelastic relative to the supply thus the price doesn't move much. Competition won't help and Doctor Campbell doesn't want competition, he wants to corner the market. Once he does, he can name his price. Transparent pricing is pointless if it doesn't include guarantees and accountability for services. I know what I'm paying on Amazon upfront before I buy, but do you know what else I know? I know their return policy, which goes to how satisfied am I with the product? Do doctors offer this? I don't see anything in either Doctor Campbell or Doctor Smith's quotes about offering up a transparency on what they will do for unsatisfied customers or people whose outcomes aren't what was promised. Will they make it right for free? Will they refund their money? Of course not. they will have them come back in and charge them again, or they will go to a different doctor who will treat them the same. In the end, since all the doctors will behave the same way in the market, it's the doctors who won't let the market work. You see, they just want control of the market from those who have it now, they have no interest in handing it over to all of us. This again goes back to doctors wanting 0 accountability with all the rewards. Not realistic. Before I'm accused of cherry picking, yes, I cherry picked. The parts of the article where the doctors talk about administrative fees being a burden on probably good points, but I don't think it takes a doctor to realize that. I also left out a large portion talking about doctors who support single payer as I'm certain many of the doctors who do see a new revenue stream more than anything else. I don't think doctors are evil, my point is simply this. The American people have shown what they want from health care. They want access regardless of income, they don't want to be told that because they are sick they have to bankrupt themselves to stay alive, basically they like almost every benefit from the ACA. Now where the American people need to ante up is on paying for it. It's easy to say what you want want, harder to pay the piper. But doctors aren't advocating in our interests, they are advocating for their own. They live in a world where they expect all the trappings of being a doctor, a god among men, where you put in some hard work for 10-12 years and then get a Mercedes when it's all over and a McMansion in a nice suburb. This is not a guarantee for any other working American, and so doctors are not entitled to any of it either. They can earn it, but not simply be being a doctor.
Consulting is fine, but what they want isn't what they should get because what they want is only beneficial to them. I'm fine lowering the costs associated with becoming a doctor, though that would require the old doctors to stop screwing the young ones over. I'm fine with reducing red tape. But I'm not interested in hearing them talk about how they want the free market and competition to rule the day because I know they don't. No business does and a practice is just that, a business.
