Quote from yeayo:
Disclaimer: I don't like most doctors, not all. I tend to think, like traders the majority of doctors are losers. Traders lose other people's wealth, doctors lose other people's health.
Healthcare costs are ridicoulously high and rising fast. Now the primary operators in this industry are: doctors. I think they are the number one cause of rising healcare costs.
- They tend to think they are entitled to make over million bucks a year for simply putting in an extra four years after college.
- They rarely say "I don't know" when they really don't know. Instead they prescribe unessary medicines, procedures, etc.
- When insurance companies and government (a form or insurance company) is picking up the tab, why not just screw em as much as possible.
- Rarely is any patient is worth more than 10 minutes of their time.
- Rarely do they mention nutrition or exercise and rarely do they look like they practice either one.
- Isn't medical malpractice now the number 2 cause of death in this country? I don't like lawyers and courts but in this case I think litigation is not the problem.
I think you have the wrong culprit in blaming this all on doctors. My father is a retired pediatrician, having practiced for over 30 years. He made $150-200K a year at the height of his earnings, which ended about 2 years ago when he retired. It took him over 10 years to pay off school loans, and this was way back when school was much less expensive. He was rarely home for any holidays because he was always getting calls from people with kid emergencies and having to go into the office or the hospital to deal with it. He was on call at least 1/2 of the time (24 hours a day), was calling people back at 3 AM constantly because their kid had the sniffles or whatever and needed to talk to the doctor NOW. He was personally available to all of his patients on basically a semi-immediate basis for years. The clinic was open for hours of 7-4 during the week, then later added weeknight hours of 7-10 PM, and weekend hours of 9-5 Saturday, 10-4 Sunday. My father was one of only 3 pediatricians available in the neighboring 2 cities ( 40,000 people total ) within a 25 mile radius.
The clinic where he was part-owner (24 other doctors) paid approximately 30% of each doctor's salary EACH YEAR for malpractice insurance premiums, despite the fact that not one of the doctors in the clinic was ever sued even once over a period of more than 20 years. 35% of the patients were on state aid, or Medicare and the clinic would wait for reimbursements from the government for upwards of 9-12 months just to get paid back a FRACTION of what it cost to provide the services. Many people would not pay their bills, out-of-pocket portions, etc. at all. The insurance companies would fight constantly to not pay any more than they absolutely had to, which meant whatever they could not fight their way out of over months. The clinic had to hire 10 people just to handle the medical records, insurance filings process, government reimbursements, and paperwork necessary to run everything. And this was a small clinic in a small town.
Yes, there are some specialties ( ie plastic surgeons, orthopedic specialists, sports doctors, etc. ) which are probably way overpaid in many cases and some of them treat their profession as a cushy prosperity scheme, but you also should consider how many people are discouraged from even becoming a doctor now because of the malpractice insurance problems, the prohibitive costs of pre-med + medical school, etc. When I was considering a major for college, my father himself told me to not consider becoming a doctor (so I became an engineer instead) because the career path was being ruined by litigation and government regulation.
Regarding the treatment options, this is a direct result of insurance and liability considerations. My father would often order tests which he knew were completely unnecessary because if he didn't, then the clinic would be liable if somebody sued later. Also, many of his fellow doctors often suggested nutrition and exercise and common sense remedies, but many times the patients would fail to do anything constructive, so the doctor would resort to medicines as a means of getting some positive changes rather than none.
Many times the natural remedies that doctors would like to use are outlawed by the FDA (that is one of the real problems), including natural treatments for cancer, etc. Therefore, they are forced to prescribe FDA-approved drugs rather than attempting to treat things as they may prefer. The few doctors that try to step out of that way of doing things, are immediately shunned by the AMA, and/or open themselves up to liability risk.
Just thought you might want to see another point of view on the matter.
Believe me, there is definitely a major cost problem, but I think that doctors are not the only (or even the main) cause of it.
