If you ask doctors what they think the new health law means for them, the responses aren’t too cheery.
An online community for docs called Sermo and Athenahealth, a company that helps doctors’ offices electronically manage payments and records, ran a few questions by docs visiting Sermo’s site starting Wednesday night.
While the survey isn’t a scientific poll, the results are pretty clear. Docs aren’t wild about overhaul.
Maybe they should speak to the AMA which supported it.
What percentage of practicing physicians actually belong to the AMA?
What percentage of AMA members work for others, e.g. hospitals, and what percentage of AMA members have their own practice?
Only 16% of physicians belong to the AMA.
The overwhelming majority of those who do belong are in academic medicine (where they are heavily encouraged/required to belong to both the AMA and to their specialty societies).
Most practicing physicians refrain from “making trouble” by setting up competing organizations, because those who have done so, tend to be targeted for “fraud investigations” by the government, and tend to find themselves on the various national practitioner black mark databases maintained by the AMA. (Simply being snotty to nurses during residency can get you permanently on the AMA national practitioner database as having engaged in unspecified “unprofessional conduct”. I have seen this happen.)
For this reason, most graduates of the residency process are smart enough to keep their head down, their mouths shut, and to focus on paying off their student loans.
For the past more than 20 years, the AMA has been a government tool to control physicians, not a voice for physicians.
Downbeat? Why would The NPR think doctors would be downbeat? After all, everybody likes going to school for 15 years, then having some Washington guy tell him what to do. You take the carrot away from in front of the donkey and the donkey stops.
NPR knows all this, but they, too, are bought and paid for.
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Downbeat? Why would The NPR think doctors would be downbeat? After all, everybody likes going to school for 15 years, then having some Washington guy tell him what to do. You take the carrot away from in front of the donkey and the donkey stops.
NPR knows all this, but they, too, are bought and paid for.
bl
So called health reform can clain anything, but were are they going to get the doctors. Maybe draft us or just repeal the 13th amendment? I’m just tired and could do with a lot more free time. The people voted for all this so they can figure it out and enjoy it.
“Doctors Appear Downbeat on Health Law–” Ya think?!!
So, how are the Dems going to incentivize the increase in primary care MDs that this law will necessitate? Or, will we now see de facto rationing of non-primary care residencies, as occurs in Europe?
Will the reimbursements for the 15 million or so new Medicaid enrollees magically improve to actually adequately pay MDs for their care?
Or, will we simply fill the holes with tens of thousands of “physician extenders” and call that equivalent to MD-provided care?
Hope all the folks who supported this enjoy the Pandora’s Box of consequences they’ve just opened.
Well, when the layers lose enough targets for alleged malpractice suits due to physician retirements and no one entering the field because there are other ares to make an easier living and not go through a career with a target on your forehead, the funding for the Dems will ablate.
Hey, why didn’t they make up LegaCaid while they were at it? That might have held down costs, too.