Patients Costs Skyrocket as Specialist Doctors Incomes Soar.

Not sure which hole in the wall doctor you see, but most physicians (especially surgical sub specialists) should not be doing that... if they are practicing the standard of care.

 

Law schools and business schools are very easy to build, relatively speaking, as you don't need labs/hospital affiliation etc and are (were) incredibly profitable because you can gouge your marks handsomely, so that's just a silly comparison.

I do probably agree that the US should have/build more medical schools, though you have a very roundabout way of getting to that point (and it's not even mentioned in your original article)?

 

Even in this thread no one complains about doctors cost. It is all about the drug costs and we still pay more than anyone..........

 

Copays have killed the complaint about doctor costs. To most people they think of a doctor costing $15, $25 maybe $50 for a specialist visit. They have no idea what the real cost of care is.

 

Everyone like to talk about cutting health care cost, but every cost is someone's income. Yes I can see real cost cutting reforms oh say in about 40 or 50 years when healthcare is about 30-35% of the GDP. Obama care totally side stepped the cost issue.

 

Rocketman1981, you're fighting the good fight. You really are.

But you're just not the right person for the job, sorry.

 

Here's something that might or might not come to a surprise. There's a hospital that hemorrhages money like no other. In fact, it would be so deep in the red that a possible merger (in my OWN opinion) with a competitor could have happened if not for one thing: its cancer treatment centers. These outpatient centers pump so much money into the hospital that they are at or close to the black because cancer treatment is THAT profitable.

What I DO agree upon, however, keeping some of these doctors' salary down. When I say some, I mean the doctors that are getting anything close to $1 million a year. You have world-renowned doctors at MD Anderson making $500-$600k a year and then you hear about these other doctors at other oncology centers making twice as much but without the same pedigree or success rate. THOSE are the doctors that really need the capping.

But healthcare is a broken system anyways. My time/experience in healthcare is only about 7 years but it's more than enough to tell me there's nothing that can be done, short term, to fix the situation. When Medicare is allowed to negotiate its rates for drugs then we can talk. Until then, it's the same ole story.

 

But unless you are having a $20K biopsy with associated pathological and procedure fees, the highest cost is drugs. My physician costs me a 15 dollar copay but the insurance only pays out 60. Any name brand medication will be much higher than that.

 

Good intention I guess I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, except that Walmart and Amazon, who until recently paid no sales taxes, but pays no more than Walmart, make millions of workers poor and pass the costs on to the tens of millions who have to subsidize these folks through paying higher taxes. for food stamps and government health care.

Hey at least they made the Walton and Bezos and a handful of others billionaires; and those misguided soles still waiting for trickle down can keep the faith.

 

Well it is proven over and over that single payer reduces costs drastically.

 

Specialist salaries do seem too high at least in comparison to family doctors.

However, focusing on this is typical little guy behavior, sort of like frothing at the mouth because a neighbor stayed on unemployment a couple of weeks longer than necessary. As we have actually met some of these doctors, but not CEO's and the hordes of finance guys making much more with no big noticeable contribution to society, we focus on the doctors.

 

Wait...are you suggesting that the CEOs, presidents, and finances guys in healthcare are making as much money as their counterparts in other industries AND that they don't contribute anything to society? If so then I'd like to know what made you draw this conclusion other than "Oh he's a CEO he MUST be making a lot of money!!"

And you DO realize that specialty medicine is one of the main reasons why costs are going up right? The number of general practice (aka family doctors) are going down every year because med students want to specialize (e.g. make that money) because of their high student loan bills that comes after graduating. That's why there's also an influx of people going into nurse practitioners and physician assistant professions as they are pretty much replacing general practitioners.