The Entire Healthcare Industry Blows.

[Tommy Gun]

Obviously. It was a joke at the frustrations in dealing with the simple act of getting an appointment, which, by the way, I still don't have.

But I'll tell you, it seems like it gets worse every year. And the frustrating thing is there's no way around it. You can't even buy your way out. and I honestly believe it won't get any better.

I still remember in the old Soviet Union days where there would be lines for commodities- like toilet paper. I forsee a day where you line up at the doctor's early in the morning and wait until they get you in. If they don't get you that day, you're welcome to come back tomorrow and try again.

You think its bad now, just wait 'till appointments from those 30 million additoinal insureds start kicking in...you'll have to leave the country to get an appointment.

 

[phragle]

If you look at he schedule/list Ted posted to implement the whole mess, they cut and cut and cut medicare reimbursment, meanwhile the patient load will be increasing, The private ins. company look to medicare to figure out how little they can pay for something. Its beyond bad already. The ambulance co. I worked for in detroit, had to take medicare pt's. to be allowed in certain facilities and areas. . In 06 reimbrsment was already so bad that it actually cost the company to transport a medicare pt. That translated into unemployment for me as the company left michigan.

 

[Ratickle]

If you look at he schedule/list Ted posted to implement the whole mess, they cut and cut and cut medicare reimbursment, meanwhile the patient load will be increasing, The private ins. company look to medicare to figure out how little they can pay for something. Its beyond bad already. The ambulance co. I worked for in detroit, had to take medicare pt's. to be allowed in certain facilities and areas. . In 06 reimbrsment was already so bad that it actually cost the company to transport a medicare pt. That translated into unemployment for me as the company left michigan.

My Brother-in-Law is a surgeon. Loses money on every Medicare/Medicaid patient he assists. The payment he receives is less than his cost for the operating room at the hospital.

 

[MarylandMark]

This was on I think 60 minutes or niteline the other day, forget which... the GP out of school for a couple years was making 120K and still had 100K + in student loans. The people he went to school with that turned specialist were all making in excess of $500k and working less.

I saw that as well. My fiancés boss grossed around $2M last year with just him (Internist & Pediatrician), her (Pediatric & Womens Health Nurse Practitioner), a receptionist (~$15/hr), 2 "nurses" (~$10/hr) and a part time girl (~$8.HR). I say "nurses" because they aren't nurses but can take blood, blood pressure, some tests and so on. The thing is they aren't that busy- like maybe 50 patients a day between the two of them @ 15-20 minutes per patient which works out to about 6.5 hours a day working each. They could drop that down to like 10 minutes and see 96 patients between the two of them in 8 hours. I say could as in care would go down but the time to do it is there- and some times they do see that many, just talking averages.

87% shortage of primary care providers in my area. A little local gossip is a few Doctors are going back to work for some hospitals because the health care overhaul makes it too hard to stay in business and some of the others are talking about a co-pay on top of your co-pay. Like to see them, it is $25 out of your pocket on top of your insurance co-pay and then whatever insurance pays them. I think they are just looking to see what they can do legally- like maybe do it as a pay-to-get-a-good-appointment-time fee or some thing like that.

Either way, looks like the price of playing poker is going up up up in my area for quality care...

The Doctor on TV- the other side of that is he wasn't in the DC metro area like I am where a $300K house means you better have an alarm, a gun, only go outside when it is light out and living on credit so $120K could have been a decent living to some extent.