My thought was that a filthy-rich drug addict could use a private doc as his own personal narcotics dispensary, and that the DEA might have already thought of this.
That could actually be a successful business model for a doc. Retain 200 families at $2,000 per year per family. That’s a $400,000 annual salary. At 4 members per family on average, that’s 800 patients; in a 250-day work year, you see, on average 3-4 patients per day. You can save money by making house calls (no need to rent an office or hire a nurse).
I don’t know if $400,000 is a good salary for an experienced doctor, but it might be a good way for a newly-minted doc to get his or her start.
Well, that has happened (see Elvis Presley and Dr. Nick, upthread), but the mere possibility of that happening doesn’t make the arrangement illegal.
Back when Presley had Dr. Nick as his full time physician, it doesn’t appear (from the little research I have done) that either the Tennessee medical regulatory board, Tennessee law enforcement authorities, or the Federals (DEA and/or FBI) paid any particular attention to the arrangement; Dr. Nick wasn’t criminally prosecuted for overprescribing drugs until three years after Presley’s death (and a jury acquitted him there), and near as I can tell his eventual loss of his medical license (in 1995) was for his practice after Elvis died (anyone knowing better feel free to enlighten me there).
Cheers,
bcg
A quick Google search on “median salary physicians united states” brings up this:
which suggests that $400K/year would be well, well above the median for physicians in the US. The middle graph suggests that median salary for a physician with 20 years experience would be around $170,550.
Cheers,
bcg
HeyHomie writes:
> Retain 200 families at $2,000 per year per family. That’s a $400,000 annual
> salary.
No, that’s $400,000 per year gross income. There’s also the cost of keeping an office. Even if you try to do everything by house calls, you would have to keep all your equipment somewhere. Besides, there are medical procedures that you would have to do at your office. Perhaps you could get by without a nurse if you did the blood pressure checks and blook drawings yourself. Who’s going to do your bookkeeping? You can get by with less bookkeeping than an average doctor, since you don’t have to negotiate everything with insurance companies, but are you going to do all your own bookkeeping? In any case, $2,000 a year for medical care from a family doctor is no bargain. The people who are spending lots for medical care each year are spending nearly all of it on specialists, on drugs, and on other things that the family doctor is making no money on.
We shouldn’t forget the Physician to the President, who has one primary patient, but he or she also treats the First Family and other White House staffers and visitors as needed (most recently when Barney, President Bush’s dog, bit a reporter who tried to pet him).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27578582/
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16772
http://clinton5.nara.gov/library/hot_releases/January_16_2001_10.html