Posted on 07/05/2012 2:23:02 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
It's been my experience that many advanced degree'd nurses think they can do it all. I'm here to say....they can't.
I know some NP's, and PA's that I would trust...with my life. But not many........
Funny thing....I know some Doc's that I wouldn't have treat my dog.
Coming soon - doctor shortages - incompetent replacements, and large looming death rates...
Back in the 1960s,70s 80S and up to the mid 1990s, the smartest kids were going to college to become medical doctors. They saw it as a career that allowed one to make a lot of money on their own terms.
Since then, it has changed and our smart kids want to be in finance and investment banking for similar reasons. They saw early that government was on the way to over-control health care and ultimately, absorb it.
We patients will be the ones getting lower levels of care and those who remain good caring doctors will be few.
Oh, pack it, buddy. I made plenty of noise to many movers and shakers. Like most docs, I don’t belong to the AMA.
As for “we the Patients,” very few really value what doctors have to offer. The majority - and “The Greatest Generation” is as bad as every other - believe free health care, and my participation in it, is their inalienable right. Self absorption and entitlement rule in this country. In my current private practice, for instance, a great many have vacation homes, and very nice recent model cars, and go on a cruise or two each year, or a few weekends or weeks at Vail each winter, or a week at Disneyland with their kids every summer - and yet, they don’t want to pay co-pays for my services or their meds; they demand not only that I prescribe meds for them but that I am obligated to get them an endless supply of free samples; they demand that I not only diagnose and treat, but once I get them well they still demand that I have to write letters and fill out endless forms for free to get them time off work, some special companion animal, disability, or forgiveness of student loans, etc, etc, etc.
Did I mention “etc”?
In other, less affluent settings, I might treat, for instance, someone’s severely suicidal depression, but they don’t want to take life-saving meds because of some very minor side effect, or because - unlike the cocaine or marijuana or alcohol they pay significantly for and consume in sizable quantity - the meds are not “natural” and a $9 co-pay is a pharmaceutical company rip off.
My wife, working in the ER, is even more burned out with the population she sees now, even though it’s better than some other ones she’s worked with. Ungrateful, entitled, demanding. She’s constantly fearful of complaints and threats to her job and license should she not give in their demands, and the patients know it, and treat her accordingly. I know it too. Both she and I practice good medicine with all comers, and both she and I have had formal complaints against our licenses with our state boards - frivolous stuff, and neither of us have had any complaints that stuck, but there’s the hell of a several year investigation, and the need to hire attorneys, and the fact that the complaint, even if found totally groundless and dismissed, becomes a permanent part of our record which we then have to defend when we change jobs or get a license in a new state.
“Let the Truth come out.” You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth. My wife grew up in Third World poverty, idealizing the people of this country - she’s appalled by them. I went through my Rat Year at VMI, boot camp, and combat - yet my rotations in medical school, and especially my internal medicine internship, were many times more brutal and scarring than any of that. And for what? So people can demand I prescribe some Xanax to cushion the crashes after each ecstasy-filled Rave they attend, or so I can listen to threats against my license from parents incensed that I won’t fill out a four page form so their juvenile 28 year old borderline can have a ferret “companion animal” accompany her to her parole hearings, or so some sociopath, who scammed the system in order to serve his eighteen year prison term instead on a cushy forensic unit, could badly assault me, then file a complaint against my license via his patient advocate, saying I deserved the assault?
I think not. “You the People” can probably become doctors in a few weeks training under the new Federal healthcare system, and then YOU can erect billboards, and then YOU can put up with the entitlement society. YOU do it, buddy. Not me.
“If ObamaCare is not repealed quickly, I imagine there will be a fleet of private hospital ships off the coasts of the USA, built for the task or modified from cruise ships, rather than converted from an unwanted supertanker. Hospital ships with a non-US flag will be immune from frivolous malpractice lawsuits, free of the unnecessary paperwork that doesn’t improve care, and paid in cash by those with the financial means - probably costing far less for better care than we’ll get for our tax dollars.”
An almost prophetic vision... :)
Sounds like something out of Ayn Rand. A business proposition that Midas Mulligan would invest in!
I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. Military would be ordered by a future Obama-like leader to shoot these out of the water.....
“If doctors salaries will be cut to the bone, who will pay for their medical school expenses? Will the taxpayers pay for students to choose medical school? Because, if the doctors aren’t going to make a good salary in the profession, how will they ever be able to pay back their exorbitant medical school loans?”
They won’t have to pay for medical school.
The -government- will pay. The medical education will be low-cost or free.
There’s a catch, however....
The medical education will come free, but the students will be told what specialties in the medical field they will learn.
Once these new young doctors graduate from medical school, they will become employees of the feds, and told where and what kind of medicine to practice.
For life, or at least for a lengthly fixed period of time.
(Aside: how much do military officers pay for -their- educations at the military acadamies?)
Obama-like? Maybe Obama himself.I think Chavez is the model.
That said, we are stuck with it now and I hope many of our physicians and specialists are already making arrangements to set up offshore in the Caribbean where they will find a welcoming environment. I do not hope that they will stay to take căre of us here.
If all the best doctors in the world practice in an American socialized system it won't make much difference to the patients. The Medical Professionals, will have to practice government medicine and their diagnoses will be second guessed by Party functionaries. I would rather know that if I can get offshore and if I can afford it, I can be treated than know that I can go to my local doctor for "free" and be better off talking to the Haitian voodoo who has quietly set up shop next to the Projects
That is a fabulous idea. I have connections that might be able to accomplish something, and I will suggest it to them. I hope any other Freepers who like the idea will also pass it along. A world-class hospital may not bring in as much revenue as a casino, but it's a whole lot cleaner and better for the surrounding community. Not to mention that any way of working around ObamaCare and big government socialism in general is a very good thing.
“Buddy’ ?? - I am a woman, to start. Second, I believe your ire belongs to the ungrateful population you deal with/ not so much to me. If I remember correctly, my question was sincere - I truly did wonder, where were the doctors as the bill came down? I figured they must like Obamacare.
I don’t appreciate your rudeness aimed towards me. Silly me, I thought this was a discussion.
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