John Conyers’s sweeping single-payer health care bill

Why is it ok for a doctor to make a profit on healthcare? Should they work for free?

As surprising as it may seem to you GreenSky, doctors don't work for free in countries with universal single payer.

 

I love it when a left wing wacko references the fattest and most dishonest left wing wacko around. Michael Moore talks about wonderful healthcare in Cuba also. Of course, it was complete BS.

So Trade, if you want to continue a discussion please do it without mentioning me. I think you're a bit beneath my intellect.

Rick
 
I love it when a left wing wacko references the fattest and most dishonest left wing wacko around. Michael Moore talks about wonderful healthcare in Cuba also. Of course, it was complete BS.

So Trade, if you want to continue a discussion please do it without mentioning me. I think you're a bit beneath my intellect.

Rick

So you think that British doctor in the video was lying?
 

When the ACA was put in place the general thinking was that as a system it would lay the ground work for a single payer system. But congress didn't have to be a part of that. If they didn't want to be subject to the ACA with all it's mandates and costs. I wonder if they would do the right thing & generate legislation to prevent themselves or their wives from investing to generate their wealth.

This is one of my big gripes about the system -- see my bold above -- If congress had to participate in any system they come with, we would no doubt get a better plan.
 
Trade it's understood that doctors don't work for free but for a better understanding of salary I prefer an explanation from a source in the UK. Michael Moore tends to look for extreme examples that IMO don't tell the whole story.

Salary and job requirements explained in a British media outlet.
Junior doctors' row: The dispute explained.


Quoted from an article.


"The starting salary for a junior doctor is currently just under £23,000 a year, but with extra payments for things such as unsociable hours, this can quite easily top £30,000.


Junior doctors at the top end of the scale can earn in excess of £70,000. But it's important to remember these doctors can be in charge of teams, making life-and-death decisions and carrying out surgery. They are really only behind consultants in seniority.


In total, there are 55,000 junior doctors in England - representing a third of the medical workforce. The BMA has just over 37,700 members."


http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34775980


For those with any interest in the pound value against the dollar.
XE Currency Converter: USD to GBP
http://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=USD&To=GBP


Finding a doctor that lives far above what seems to me to be typical probably took Moore some digging. Missing from Moore's interview is the potential for an inheritance, wife working, or other wealth outside of his salary. I didn't hear how long that doctor practiced which makes a difference in top salary.


All in all IMO Moore presents a poor representation of how well doctors in the U K NHS system are paid.
 
Trade it's understood that doctors don't work for free but for a better understanding of salary I prefer an explanation from a source in the UK. Michael Moore tends to look for extreme examples that IMO don't tell the whole story.

I've already made my decision and it's final.
 
The best argument FOR a SP-UHC system appeared on 60 Minutes a couple of years ago. They did a piece on the French health care system, and that system is something we could Learn From. The French station Primary Care doctors in neighborhoods, and these doctors make housecalls....24/7. They are paid about $100K/yr, and their housing is subsidized. They can take care of many "emergency" calls without the patient having to rush to a hospital in the middle of the night.

Contrast that with a situation where 95% of our current med students are planning on entering a specialty....so as to make the Big Bucks. It won't be many years before we have very few family doctors available...and the one's we Do have will probably be imported from India.
 
All in all IMO Moore presents a poor representation of how well doctors in the U K NHS system are paid.

Michael Moore tends to engage in fiction but twists it (like others on the left and right) to suit his needs. He's a dishonest pile of garbage hoping that the country becomes socialist.

Of course, he hates capitalism but has made millions from movies and books. And the sheeple believe his crap. But like most of his "kind", socialism is not for the socialists. It's for the rest of us.

On a personal note, 5 years ago I had a hip replacement. I was playing golf the day before the surgery. It was my choice to get this done. Had I lived in Canada, England or other "wonderful" single pay countries the likelihood is I would still be waiting for this voluntary surgery. However I would have received a free cane.

Rick
 
The best argument FOR a SP-UHC system appeared on 60 Minutes a couple of years ago. They did a piece on the French health care system, and that system is something we could Learn From. The French station Primary Care doctors in neighborhoods, and these doctors make housecalls....24/7. They are paid about $100K/yr, and their housing is subsidized. They can take care of many "emergency" calls without the patient having to rush to a hospital in the middle of the night.

Contrast that with a situation where 95% of our current med students are planning on entering a specialty....so as to make the Big Bucks. It won't be many years before we have very few family doctors available...and the one's we Do have will probably be imported from India.
I began with learning from what others got right & what has gone wrong for them since.

The other posts about doctors pay along with yours point out one of the many problems why zeroing in on a single payer system is so difficult. It comes down to what is intelligence and ability worth? A wage is about a person selling their time and skill, some are satisfied with whatever they can get others try to excel. It could be that doctors from other places fill the void as you say. It could also mean that doctors that manage to squeak thru will fill that void. It comes down to accepting the idea that a D grade physician will get the same pay as a an A grade one in a system that pays by specialty. I don't think many would want to be operated on by a neurosurgeon that barely passed the qualifying criteria.
 
I don't see much difference in how we pay doctors under our current system and how we would pay them under a medicare for all system.

Currently a doctor can charge any amount they choose but the health insurance companies and medicare negotiate a cap on what they will pay. The doctor accepts that patient and the payment offered or rejects them. The person that really takes it on the chin is the person with no insurance, they have to pay whatever the doctor charges.

As far as the quality of doctors it is a fact now and always will be a fact that 50% of all doctors practicing in this country graduate in the bottom half of their class.
 
My wife is still 7 months away from being eligible for Medicare but today we already started to get the junk mail from the insurance companies looking to cash in. What really makes me mad is that they send these notices in a mail out that is designed to trick you into thinking it's an official correspondence from Medicare. It came in the same kind of cardboard foldout where you have to tear off the perforated sides to open. Exactly like the notices that Medicare and Social Security send out. And they use the same print format too.

"Important Document Enclosed" "Medicare Health Care Information Enclosed".

But what it is actually is Is a flyer from "TZ Insurance Solutions LLC", a private company looking to hawk their Medicare Advantage Plans.

What Charlatans. Isn't there a law against impersonating an official government document? Well there ought to be.

DSC_0176.jpg
 
On a personal note, 5 years ago I had a hip replacement. I was playing golf the day before the surgery. It was my choice to get this done. Had I lived in Canada, England or other "wonderful" single pay countries the likelihood is I would still be waiting for this voluntary surgery. However I would have received a free cane.

Rick

Why on earth would someone get an unnecessary hip replacement?
 
I don't see much difference in how we pay doctors under our current system and how we would pay them under a medicare for all system.


Currently a doctor can charge any amount they choose but the health insurance companies and medicare negotiate a cap on what they will pay. The doctor accepts that patient and the payment offered or rejects them. The person that really takes it on the chin is the person with no insurance, they have to pay whatever the doctor charges.


As far as the quality of doctors it is a fact now and always will be a fact that 50% of all doctors practicing in this country graduate in the bottom half of their class.




The center paragraph is the one that speaks to the difference, this sentence specifically.


Quote
"The doctor accepts that patient and the payment offered or rejects them."


That is how the system works now, the ability to choose. If a person seeking a career in the medical field is happy with having what they earn dictated to them then a single payer system should work well for them. Many countries have that as the normal way to offer care. We'll just have to abandon the system in place now & get comfortable with socialized medicine. That could take some getting used to.






As for that 50% I think you mean medical students. Once a student is tested and certified they are then doctors with no % ranking.
 
I have a cousin in Denver, whose grandson graduated from medical school about 5 years ago. A couple of years ago, we had a big family reunion in Denver, and I had an opportunity to talk to this young doctor at some length. He admitted that a major portion of the curriculum was devoted to studying prescription drugs and matching them to various patient symptoms. "Treatment", and masking of symptoms was paramount in his education, with very little time devoted to "Prevention". In reality, I think a person can spend some quality time on the Internet...at sites such as the Mayo Clinic, or WebMD, and determine their own issues as well as, or even better, than a hurried diagnosis at a doctors office.

Things really haven't changed all that much in the past century. 100 years ago, when doctors were often referred to as "quacks", the primary treatment was Opium. Today, the answer for many of the patient's issues is the prescribing of Opioids. The big difference is that today, It costs a fortune to support our present Health Care Industry....note, I said Industry, rather than "System"....and the primary purpose of Any Industry is to make money.
 
With all the demonization of opioids, I think it is important to remember that these drugs serve a very useful purpose in medicine, i.e., what they were designed to do, the control of pain. Without these drugs, many people could not function on any level except to lay in bed screaming. Opioids have their place, and many, many people with intractable pain (for which no alternative method will alleviate the pain) use them wisely.

When it comes to opioids, I think we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
 
If a person seeking a career in the medical field is happy with having what they earn dictated to them then a single payer system should work well for them. Many countries have that as the normal way to offer care. We'll just have to abandon the system in place now & get comfortable with socialized medicine. That could take some getting used to.

Someone needs to be able to negotiate for the patient because the elasticity of demand is very limited with regard to medical care. If someone tries to gouge me on the price of a TV set, I can tell them to pound sand and walk away. But if I'm having a heart attack it comes down to pay or die.
 
The solution is for government control of everything. That way nobody get gouged for any service.

It's worked so well in the USSR.

Rick
 
The solution is for government control of everything. That way nobody get gouged for any service.

It's worked so well in the USSR.

Rick

I think Don M's identifying health care as an industry is an accurate description of what America has. The media reports that as an industry it affects 1/6th. of America's economy. For profit has built America, so it may be time to eliminate and have government be the collector, employer & funds distributor in a single payer system. Most likely the employees that were paid wages from the profit of an insurance company will be re employed by the government since they will have to training needed to assure a smooth transition.


That sounds like a shift from a capitalist economy to a socialist one but it only affects 1/6th of the economy. This is one of those times when being an older senior is a disadvantage. I'd like to be around to see how this turns out. So many interesting things to witness. Things like the impact on the stock market when the loss of investing in companies that used to be for profit are now price controlled kicks in.


We do have examples of how well government controls work. Nixon demonstrated that, the Russian example & lately Venezuela. But experience is the best teacher. Tell a kid not to play with matches, some listen others need to be burned to learn.

This is one of those times when being an older senior and not getting to see how this all shakes out is disappointing.
 


Trade I need some help understanding how you read that as success


What I read is a description of how single payer is constructed and funded. Nothing about % of GDP with the exception of the inset for Israels percent of GDP shows 2005.


Another inset showing
58 countries with universal health care in 2009.[1]
Countries with legislation mandating universal health care, along with > 90% health insurance coverage, and > 90% skilled birth attendance.


I dropped down to the references and found 2010 as the year of input.


References[edit]
Jump up ^ Stuckler, David; Feigl, Andrea B.; Basu, Sanjay; McKee, Martin (November 2010). "The political economy of universal health coverage. Background paper for the First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, 16–19 November 2010, Montreaux, Switzerland" (PDF). Pacific Health Summit. Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research. p. 16. Figure 2. Global Prevalence of Universal Health Care in 2009; 58 countries: Andorra, Antigua, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Moldova, Mongolia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Panama, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, UAE, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela.




I could be wrong but from 2005 & 2010 the dates used in the article there are probably some changes to the success you claim. The article didn't mention how many of those 3rd. world countries receive foreign aid from America to be able to subsidize their successful plans. Or no cost for defence because other places pick up the tab for their security.




I understand taking the time to research data from 2016 or the foreign aid given probably won't happen. Maybe just clarifying by country where a claim of success is shown.
 


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