A lot of it stems from the government is so awful at running things. There is mass corruption, there is no accountablity and bonuses and salary have no qualification and are based on who gets elected.
This has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats, it’s just the way it works. Look at Chicago, there isn’t a city that makes more money and has less to show for it. Yet we find $40,000/year file clerks (yes all they do is FILE) complaining they don’t make enough.
We have the same people elected year in and year out, because these alderman make sure their constituates vote by giving them favours even though the only interest it serves is that alderman. Now Chicago is horribly corrupt and inneficient, but this translates throughout government everywhere.
Look at Washington, do you ever wonder why congress seems so out of touch with everyone? Because almost everyone is a lawyer. Now this isn’t to say lawyers are bad (or good) it’s just they all come from the same point of view. Sure they argue a bit, but when you sit down and analyze it, it’s the basic same view, by the same people, all trained to think the same way, 'cause they are lawyer.
It’s the product of “same thinking” or too many cooks spoil the broth
OK, haven’t found it yet, but from what I can see so far, there’s little difference in median physician income country to country.
Airstrip One’s “private sector” medicine is subsidized by the public sector. The hospitals are tax-supported, after all. Private medicine & private health insurance are far cheaper in the UK than in the USA.
We should make med school free, really. It’s society that benefits from having physicians, society should foot the bill.
[del]Huerta88,[/del] whoever you are, I’m going to shout to get it through your thick head. THIS IS AMERICA. WHATEVER SYSTEM WE INSTITUTE WILL BE DRAWN UP IN SUCH A WAY AS TO PREVENT IT FROM HARMING PRIVATE ENTERPRISE. Really, how can anyone think that Congress is full of Bolsheviks unless they’ve never observed Congress?
Oh, never mind, this is GQ. Sorry. Yes, quite right, that is an argument someone would make. It’s still ign’ant.
While this thread is descending through GD so fast it’s liable to drop into the Pit within three posts, but this is, unfortuately, not nearly so certain. Two major plans being prepared right now will require people to have insurance. And if not, you have to pay the government or apply for messy and long-winded relief or exemptions, and in any case you are required to hand over all kinds of information the government has no earthly business holding in its grubby mitts.
Moreover, the economic consequences of the plans are likely to drive out good insurance, because the government’s restrictions are intrinsically and purposefully arbitrary. The government, under its new schemes, can simply decide on a whim to cancel any prvate insurance. And not by an act of any elected body, but by a bureaucrat, simply by deciding it doesn’t meet their arbitrary standards.
I won’t go itno it all, but here’s the basic thought: Medicaid and Medicare are egernally though to be terribly badly managed, so cheap that low-scale insurance fraud is the onyl way doctors actually take most patients, and largely useless. Thatn alone is a huge and very valid reason for the AMA to protest. Frankly, we have few enough doctors as-is and more are leaving the profession rather than continue with sky-high insurance rates and immense stress. I’m in favor of paying them more, so as to get more doctors.
Doctors are smart people who give up about ten of their high-earning years (4 med school, 3-7 residency) to either go into debt or get puny stipends. Their opportunity costs are very high; they could go into finance (still plenty of jobs at the high end), law, engineering and come out ahead financially. When the average medical school graduate has over $100K in debt, I think we can reasonably view this grumbling about their being “overpaid” as simple class jealousy.
Also important is the lack of autonomy doctors will face under government healthcare. Many doctors who are not hospital employees value the freedom of being able to set up your own practice with minimal legal regulation (minus of course insurance bureaucracy, that’s unlikely to go away do matter what healthcare system we have). They are therefore unhappy not only about the prospect of a NHS-style system in which doctors are doing government work, but about the general trend of UHC shifting towards doctors being employees rather than free agents.
Exactly, they’re tired of the private insurance companies nitpicking over what constitutes a pre-existing condition or forcing too low of a rate down their throats. A lot of doctors just don’t have the fight in them anymore because of all the red tape involved.
And just why is the AMA in bed with the insurance industry? I thought they were supposed to be an advocacy group for DOCTORS, not insurance companies, a good many of which are despised by a lot of physicians. How did this unholy alliance come about?
While there is no doubt that doctors who oppose single payer healthcare do so for financial reasons (or “ideological reasons” that are really motivated beliefs), it’s not nearly so one-sided.
For example, recent studies have found a majority support SPHC:
The AMA is a traditionally conservative group: it fought Medicare tooth and nail in the 60s, and vigorously opposed the first health insurance companies in the 30s. Don’t forget that it’s the AMA’s fault there is currently a shortage of doctors. It was so busy trying to help its members’ bottom line by limiting supply that it didn’t consider how severe the outcomes would be:
And remember that residency positions are funded by Medicare, which means the funding for the training of doctors comes from the government. So, private industry (the doctors who eventually go into private practice, the hospitals who get government funding for research and positions, etc.) gets a freebie.
I think the enormous medical school bills play a role in motivating doctors to pursue more lucrative career paths (i.e., choosing high-paying specialties instead of working primary care in underserved areas). Of course, since everyone agrees that preventative care would cut total healthcare expenditures, everyone should recognize that training more primary care physicians is particularly important. Yet, the current fee-for-service system privileges specialists who can bill for expensive procedures (rather than basic physicals). Just another argument for single payer.
Basically, a majority of doctors support single payer in spite of the financial gain–because they actually care about patients and want their profession to regain its respect.
My apologies for suggesting your were a commie, then. I thought you were calling medical professions who decided to work in Michigan instead of in Ontario greedy, just because they chose to make the daily trip.
Self-interest isn’t greed. There’s a difference. Greed is avarice. Your desire has no limits, and what you do to sate that desire is without limits. That’s beyond simple self-interest.
Adding “excessive” in front doesn’t clear up anything. This goes right back to anyone’s subjective opinion of what is excessive. What’s excessive salary for a doctor? 80k? 200k? 500k? I really don’t know and its hypocrisy to attempt to define that number.
Is the AMA against single-payer? I keep reading articles that take it as a given that doctors want single-payer. Can you start off by citing something that shows the AMA actually is against it?
No. I have on occaision heard docors complain about insurance, but it’s nothing that any billing service that complex wouldn’t argue about. Private insurance is usually prompt and non-argumentative. Government insurance, however, is a nightmare.
So, if doctors are leaving because of the high costs of malpractice insurance, that’s a knock against SPHC? Since out of control costs are something that everyone agrees is a problem, wouldn’t establishing a single standard for health care via the federal government simplify malpractice lawsuits? That way the courts wouldn’t need to deal with the complexities of regulation and private contracts. If a physician failed to meet the standards, then he did not meet his obligations. OTOH, if the injury to the patient was not caused by negligence, then the patient could get proper medical care without having to sue the original doctor to pay for it.
This does not squre with my experience. Having dealt with medical billing issues (from the IT side) for about 6 years, and having been in a relationship with a doctor for about 10, my experience has been that both private and government insurance is a nightmare. Private insurance companies are certainly not non-argumentative.
Are you serious? When I was a pharmacy tech, roughly one third of all new patients would have their first prescriptions rejected by their insurers for various bizarre reasons. On the other hand, new Medicaid and Medicare patient prescriptions generally went through with a minimum of fuss.
Moreover, the Medicaid/Medicare call centers were staffed by people who spoke English fluently.
QFT. I worked for a large company that actually employed a staff of about 8 responsible for helping its employees work through issues with their employer-provided health insurance that were too complex for first-line HR to handle. And this was “good” insurance from companies that obviously didn’t want to lose our corporate business, because we were an excellent client.
The most basic answer is that the AMA lies to the right on the political spectrum of the majority of their membership, and they also only count as members a (relatively small) minority of American physicians, although they are the largest physician organization in the United States.
A parallel example might be AMSA. AMSA is the American Medical Students Association that counts about half of American medical students plus a lot more pre-meds as members. AMSA’s position on universal healthcare is extremely liberal. Some of their official position statements call for the establishment of wholly government run healthcare systems that outlaws the private provision of healthcare services, which is even more socialized than the NHS.
I think very few medical students actually support such a position, so how can AMSA count so many of them as members? Because there are low barriers to entry, they’ve got some discounts at Barnes and Noble, and if you apply for the AMSA Visa credit card and membership you get a free copy of Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy which is the current standard in medical school anatomy textbooks.
My point is that it is certainly possible for the positions of an organization and the average views of their “constituency,” (both their members and the people they’re trying to recruit) can diverge greatly.
The typical view of American physicians likely lies somewhere in the middle. I can dig up some cites if needed, but recent polling published in JAMA or NEJM have shown a shift to physician majority support of universal healthcare system.
The British Medical Association was also very much against it when the government proposed to bring it in after the war. As the clock ticked down towards Vesting Day there was a stand-off between them. Nye Bevan eventually broke their boycott by announcing that doctors who signed up patents onto their ‘panel’ would be paid a capitation allowance, and once enough doctors broke ranks to fill their pockets the BMA surrendered too. The consultants held out longer, and Bevan later confided that he had to “stuff their mouths with gold” by giving them generous terms to participate.
Ironically, in later decades the BMA became one of the most ferocious defenders of the new status quo.
From what I’ve read, it seems the AMA is one of the few institutions in America today more full of shit than Wall Street.
At least Wall Street is pretty up front about their desire to make money and don’t cloak their motives in a veil of altruism.
The AMA however seems to talk of both sides of its mouth. On the one hand, they say they want everyone to have affordable healthcare. On the other, they have kept artificially low the number of medical schools in this country and have gotten into bed with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. If they ever did a truly noble desire to help their fellow man, it long ago vanished.