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Nearly 50 percent of doctors ready to quit medicine if Healthcare bill passes

Catawba said:
The government has not taken over production and distribution, so no socialism there.

Originally Posted by cholla
so·cial·ism   /ˈsoʊʃəˌlɪzəm/ Show Spelled[soh-shuh-liz-uhm] Show IPA
–noun
1.a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.


The HCR is less collectivist than social programs implemented by our forefathers upheld to be in keeping with the Constitution for decades now, so no socialism there either.
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I don't think that you can make a good argument that Obama is not advocating for the control of the american economy with the federal govt owning banks, car companies and now on the way to controling the health care industry.

Using only part of the definition of a word in your answer does not change the original meaning.
 
Erod said:
Physician Survey: Health Reform?s Potential Impact on Physician Supply and Quality of Medical Care



This deserves to be in Breaking News in my opinion because it is obviously topical, the results are startling, and the New England Journal of Medicine isn't exactly a politically-charged blog site. There are many references to this article today, but I thought it best to post the survey itself.

Will your personal doctor give up his/her practice if Obamacare passes?

Obama is sickening. He pulls a bunch of white coats up on stage as if the medical community is completely "behind him" on this. Obviously, they are not.

America, this is what the radical left looks like. Like much?
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So at this point, gotta ask buddy, where are all these doctors that are quitting in droves?
 
Politics101 said:
You clearly do not know human behavior if you can't see how working for no profit also reduces the desire to excel in a given field. If all doctors worked for the same pay, it's a guarantee it will also reduce the number of 'best of the best' doctors in the overall health care system.

Human behavior dictates that if given incentives to work, typically you will work harder to excel and earn the rewards that go along with it. It's called the Power of Free Enterprise, and the Pilgrims first learned about this after settling in the New World.

If you remove the incentives it also removes the desire to excel. Why? If no matter how hard you work or what you do, you earn the same wage as every other doctor. You can begin to imagine the medical field will slowly decline as it gets worse and worse over time, and the it will plateau as average quality health care. That's a fact; socialism has never worked in the history of its existence. And it won't work this time, either.
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It's simply not true that better doctors earn more money. Doctors who do more procedures, and do procedures that are better-reimbursed, earn more money. But more is not always better when it comes to things like surgery, and better-reimbursed procedures are not necessarily the most cost-effective.
 
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Jetboogieman said:
So at this point, gotta ask buddy, where are all these doctors that are quitting in droves?
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Many of them are now what we know as "hospitalists". These are basically doctors who contract with hospitals to see patients who are hospitalized, but they don't have a private practice. It cuts out the overhead costs of running a private practice.
Some of them will join a specialty group to provide on-call services or perform specific services for that specialty group (as an example, I have a friend who was a family practice physician for about 20 years. He now works for a cardiology group taking night call and reading EKG's for them).
 
Hatuey said:
Lol. Doctors are going to quit if Health Bill passes? Where are they going to work? MacDonalds? lmao.
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A good number of them have already closed their private practices. Some of the GP's that I know are looking at alternative careers. As for how many more get out of private practice or leave the profession altogether, only time will tell.
 
lizzie said:
A good number of them have already closed their private practices. Some of the GP's that I know are looking at alternative careers. As for how many more get out of private practice or leave the profession altogether, only time will tell.
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No, I don't believe that is true. Can you link anything verifiable to show this.
 
lizzie said:
Many of them are now what we know as "hospitalists". These are basically doctors who contract with hospitals to see patients who are hospitalized, but they don't have a private practice. It cuts out the overhead costs of running a private practice.
Some of them will join a specialty group to provide on-call services or perform specific services for that specialty group (as an example, I have a friend who was a family practice physician for about 20 years. He now works for a cardiology group taking night call and reading EKG's for them).
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If this is true, it happened before reform.
 
Boo Radley said:
No, I don't believe that is true. Can you link anything verifiable to show this.
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I'm speaking from personal knowledge and observation, but I'll see if I can find you some published information.
 
Related article links:

According to the Society of Hospital Medicine (2007a), a hospitalist is a physician "whose primary professional focus is the general medical care of hospitalized patients. Hospitalists' activities include patient care, teaching, research, and leadership related to Hospital Medicine." The field of hospital medicine has experienced tremendous growth since Wachter and Goldman (1996) coined the term "hospitalists" in 1996. In the mid-1990s, there were approximately 800 hospitalists in the United States; today, that number is approaching 15,000, with the anticipation that by 2010, the number will exceed 20,000 (Society of Hospital Medicine 2007b).
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http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/174372609

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David Yu, MD, learned early on the value of being flexible. While attending Washington University in St. Louis, he found his calling when he changed his major from economics to biology. When the malpractice insurance crisis forced him to close his private practice, he embraced an opportunity to launch a program devoted to the “newfangled concept” of hospital medicine.
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The Accidental Hospitalist :: Article - The Hospitalist

------------------------

Banda says it was virtually no choice at all. While he did see outpatients initially after taking the position, he moved to inpatient care full time in 2003.
“At the end of the day, I realized that half of my time, I was not seeing patients,” he says. “[Being a hospitalist] definitely took me away from having to manage these things and let me spend more time managing patients, which is what I was better at.”
Advertisement | Advertising

Banda now is one of 20 hospitalists at Baton Rouge General, specializing in internal medicine and pediatrics


For ob-gyn Dr. Jan Benanti, a phone call from her mother was what clinched her move into a hospitalist position after almost 15 years in private practice. Although Benanti had a full schedule of patients, she took the day off to be with her mother while her father underwent minor surgery. That experience confirmed for Benanti that being on call 24-7 with work hours that involved making rounds, treating patients at the office as well as running back and forth to the hospital for deliveries did not fit with the lifestyle she wanted


Banda and Benanti say physicians in private practice often seek hospitalist positions because medical school and residencies don’t teach them the business skills necessary to run a practice alone. A newly minted doctor can still work with an already established practice and get by learning the required business savvy on the side. The assumption current 20 years ago that a doctor straight out of medical school could open the doors of a private practice alone is no longer applicable in a world of federal regulations, HMOs, malpractice insurance and a host of other issues that could require a business degree to navigate but have little to do with patient care
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url=http://www.businessreport.com/news/2010/mar/08/general-hospitalists-hlcr1/]:: Baton Rouge Business Report :: General hospitalists[/url]
 
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and another...

We're seeing a decrease in the percentage of physicians in general internal medicine with a balanced distribution between inpatient and outpatient services - the traditional office-based general internal medicine physician who also goes to the hospital to treat his or her patients when they need acute care," Kuo said.

Using the Medicare data, the researchers showed increases in hospitalist care over time for patients with different diagnoses and at hospitals of different sizes, and were able to map regional growth in hospitalist care. In 2006, there was marked geographic variation in the rates of care provided by hospitalists, with rates of more than 70 percent in some hospital referral regions. "Although the growth of care by hospitalists has been greater in certain geographic areas, substantial growth occurred in every area." Kuo said.
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Dramatic Growth In Number Of Hospitalists Revealed By UTMB Study
 
lizzie said:
and another...



Dramatic Growth In Number Of Hospitalists Revealed By UTMB Study
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Now we don't want to confuse Boo with anything that contradicts what he thinks. I know he is going to hate this one since he believes that you can crank out doctors just like car parts off an assembly line. No one has really addresses this problem just like no one has addressed why insured people use ER's instead of their local doctors.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.

Experts warn there won't be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.

The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient.

The U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now, and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical-school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007.

A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.

Proponents of the new health-care law say it does attempt to address the physician shortage. The law offers sweeteners to encourage more people to enter medical professions, and a 10% Medicare pay boost for primary-care doctors.

Meanwhile, a number of new medical schools have opened around the country recently. As of last October, four new medical schools enrolled a total of about 190 students, and 12 medical schools raised the enrollment of first-year students by a total of 150 slots, according to the AAMC. Some 18,000 students entered U.S. medical schools in the fall of 2009, the AAMC says.

But medical colleges and hospitals warn that these efforts will hit a big bottleneck: There is a shortage of medical resident positions. The residency is the minimum three-year period when medical-school graduates train in hospitals and clinics.

There are about 110,000 resident positions in the U.S., according to the AAMC. Teaching hospitals rely heavily on Medicare funding to pay for these slots. In 1997, Congress imposed a cap on funding for medical residencies, which hospitals say has increasingly hurt their ability to expand the number of positions.

Medicare pays $9.1 billion a year to teaching hospitals, which goes toward resident salaries and direct teaching costs, as well as the higher operating costs associated with teaching hospitals, which tend to see the sickest and most costly patients.

Doctors' groups and medical schools had hoped that the new health-care law, passed in March, would increase the number of funded residency slots, but such a provision didn't make it into the final bill.

"It will probably take 10 years to even make a dent into the number of doctors that we need out there," said Atul Grover, the AAMC's chief advocacy officer.
 
Conservative said:
Now we don't want to confuse Boo with anything that contradicts what he thinks. I know he is going to hate this one since he believes that you can crank out doctors just like car parts off an assembly line. No one has really addresses this problem just like no one has addressed why insured people use ER's instead of their local doctors.
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Thanks for the linked article.:)

Yes, alot of the posters here don't understand the causes and effects of what is happening in the medical profession. I've been in the field for 27 years. I've watched the decline, and I have lots of friends and acquaintances who are doctors. The crappy attitudes I see among many of the young on this site are exactly part of the problem. There is alot of ignorance regarding the issue, and alot of armchair medical experts cheering for a lost cause.
 
Conservative said:
Now we don't want to confuse Boo with anything that contradicts what he thinks. I know he is going to hate this one since he believes that you can crank out doctors just like car parts off an assembly line. No one has really addresses this problem just like no one has addressed why insured people use ER's instead of their local doctors.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.

Experts warn there won't be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.

The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient.

The U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now, and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical-school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007.

A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.

Proponents of the new health-care law say it does attempt to address the physician shortage. The law offers sweeteners to encourage more people to enter medical professions, and a 10% Medicare pay boost for primary-care doctors.

Meanwhile, a number of new medical schools have opened around the country recently. As of last October, four new medical schools enrolled a total of about 190 students, and 12 medical schools raised the enrollment of first-year students by a total of 150 slots, according to the AAMC. Some 18,000 students entered U.S. medical schools in the fall of 2009, the AAMC says.

But medical colleges and hospitals warn that these efforts will hit a big bottleneck: There is a shortage of medical resident positions. The residency is the minimum three-year period when medical-school graduates train in hospitals and clinics.

There are about 110,000 resident positions in the U.S., according to the AAMC. Teaching hospitals rely heavily on Medicare funding to pay for these slots. In 1997, Congress imposed a cap on funding for medical residencies, which hospitals say has increasingly hurt their ability to expand the number of positions.

Medicare pays $9.1 billion a year to teaching hospitals, which goes toward resident salaries and direct teaching costs, as well as the higher operating costs associated with teaching hospitals, which tend to see the sickest and most costly patients.

Doctors' groups and medical schools had hoped that the new health-care law, passed in March, would increase the number of funded residency slots, but such a provision didn't make it into the final bill.

"It will probably take 10 years to even make a dent into the number of doctors that we need out there," said Atul Grover, the AAMC's chief advocacy officer.
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Actually, this doesn't match her claim. Let me quote it for you:

A good number of them have already closed their private practices.
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To which I noted that any who did likely did so BEFORE and reform. And I am seeking any factual information that reform has factually led to any significant number leaving. Your article doesn't address that.


Nor do I believe people won't be seen.
 
Boo Radley said:
Are you noticing the dates? You are actually supporting my argument. Let me repeat it for you:
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Yes, I did, and no, I'm not. My original response was to Hatuey when he asked something like "where are all of them going to work, McDonalds?". It doesn't matter that it started before the reform was passed. This is a growing trend, and it will continue. So far, the projections that I have read are that there will be expansion of hospitalists and a decline of GP's until at least 2018.


My response to you was regarding your disbelief that what I said was true:
Originally Posted by lizzie
A good number of them have already closed their private practices. Some of the GP's that I know are looking at alternative careers. As for how many more get out of private practice or leave the profession altogether, only time will tell.
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You told me you did not believe this to be true. I was supplying information based on my personal observation, but you wanted refs, so I gave them to you.
 
lizzie said:
Yes, I did, and no, I'm not. My original response was to Hatuey when he asked something like "where are all of them going to work, McDonalds?". It doesn't matter that it started before the reform was passed. This is a growing trend, and it will continue. So far, the projections that I have read are that there will be expansion of hospitalists and a decline of GP's until at least 2018.
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Fair enough, but it is important overall because it means reform isn't the reason.

My response to you was regarding your disbelief that what I said was true:


You told me you did not believe this to be true. I was supplying information based on my personal observation, but you wanted refs, so I gave them to you.
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I said one part wasn't true:

A good number of them have already closed their private practices.
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Not in relationship to reform. And even those you cite are still in private practice, they've just limited their method. That too can change over time. But reform hasn't moved them in that direction. In fact, lack of reform has. This is important to realize.
 
Boo Radley said:
Actually, this doesn't match her claim. Let me quote it for you:



To which I noted that any who did likely did so BEFORE and reform. And I am seeking any factual information that reform has factually led to any significant number leaving. Your article doesn't address that.


Nor do I believe people won't be seen.
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Three different issues, first doctors will no longer accept Medicare and Medicaid patients because of reimbursement rates, Second doctors will quit rather than being forced to take those patients, and third new doctors will not enter the profession or if they do it will take 10 years of training before they become effective.

You are naive, gullible, and very misinformed as once again you ignored the content of the Wall Street Journal article.
 
Boo Radley said:
Not in relationship to reform. And even those you cite are still in private practice, they've just limited their method. That too can change over time. But reform hasn't moved them in that direction. In fact, lack of reform has. This is important to realize.
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Where did I say it had a relationship to reform?

The health care reform didn't cause it, it will make it worse. If you believe that reform is going to make things better, then that's fine, but you are speaking from the point of view of ignorance on what all the factors are, and just what a government can do to "fix" things. Not all problems can be remedied by throwing government money in their direction, and this often seems to make them worse.
 
lizzie said:
Where did I say it had a relationship to reform?

The health care reform didn't cause it, it will make it worse. If you believe that reform is going to make things better, then that's fine, but you are speaking from the point of view of ignorance on what all the factors are, and just what a government can do to "fix" things. Not all problems can be remedied by throwing government money in their direction, and this often seems to make them worse.
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Then I need evidence they made it worse. I linked for conservative a report, complete with a doctor who called reform a net gain, that showed it might make it better.

Nor do I claim all problems can be fixed by the government. Nowhere do I suggest that.
 
Conservative said:
Three different issues, first doctors will no longer accept Medicare and Medicaid patients because of reimbursement rates, Second doctors will quit rather than being forced to take those patients, and third new doctors will not enter the profession or if they do it will take 10 years of training before they become effective.

You are naive, gullible, and very misinformed as once again you ignored the content of the Wall Street Journal article.
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No change from now. Doctors refuse those patients now, or at least some do. There are efforts in the bill to ease that. But nothing in the bill that causes that.

And no, doctors are not being forced and they won't quit.

And no, there is no evidence that being a doctor is less appealing today than it was. You're making unsupported leaps.
 
Boo Radley said:
No change from now. Doctors refuse those patients now, or at least some do. There are efforts in the bill to ease that. But nothing in the bill that causes that.

And no, doctors are not being forced and they won't quit.

And no, there is no evidence that being a doctor is less appealing today than it was. You're making unsupported leaps.
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Since there is a shortage of doctors now, what happens with this legislation if it makes things worse? This bill relies on 500 billion in cuts, where do those cuts go?

Look, I know you want thing better but accepting this POS doesn't make things better and isn't even a good first step. We have 4 years of taxes that will never be recovered before the so called benefits kick in and since I posted documented proof that the insured are using the ER's, which you acknowledged but now ignore, I then asked you to get the results from MA on their universal care and how costs have increased, which you ignored, I posted the Wall Street Journal article which says we have a doctor shortage, which you are still ignoring.

Not sure what else I can do as nothing is going to change your mind. There are no consequences in your world for failure even though history is riddled with liberal failures. Nothing liberal legislation ever does is promote personal responsibilty, solve individual social problems, and promotes the greatness of America. You and the liberal agenda continue to destroy this country, you unintentionally but the liberal leadership intentionally to create dependence.
 
Conservative said:
Since there is a shortage of doctors now, what happens with this legislation if it makes things worse? This bill relies on 500 billion in cuts, where do those cuts go?

Look, I know you want thing better but accepting this POS doesn't make things better and isn't even a good first step. We have 4 years of taxes that will never be recovered before the so called benefits kick in and since I posted documented proof that the insured are using the ER's, which you acknowledged but now ignore, I then asked you to get the results from MA on their universal care and how costs have increased, which you ignored, I posted the Wall Street Journal article which says we have a doctor shortage, which you are still ignoring.

Not sure what else I can do as nothing is going to change your mind. There are no consequences in your world for failure even though history is riddled with liberal failures. Nothing liberal legislation ever does is promote personal responsibilty, solve individual social problems, and promotes the greatness of America. You and the liberal agenda continue to destroy this country, you unintentionally but the liberal leadership intentionally to create dependence.
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People will still be seen. There really isn't much chance it will make things worse, as it actually offers some things to help. You over play the shortage.

What should change a mind is actual evidence. I've addressed all you have presented and simply don't see what you claim. You seem to have a sky is falling mentality and the fact is the problem was bad before and can only get better by doing something.
 
Boo Radley said:
People will still be seen. There really isn't much chance it will make things worse, as it actually offers some things to help. You over play the shortage.

What should change a mind is actual evidence. I've addressed all you have presented and simply don't see what you claim. You seem to have a sky is falling mentality and the fact is the problem was bad before and can only get better by doing something.
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You have refuted nothing as all you have done is posted opinion pieces which ignore actual facts. The purpose of this bill was to reform healthcare yet all you claim now is this multi trillion dollar bill is a good first step. Your problem is you don't seem to understand how much a trillion dollars is nor do you see the potential consequences of failure.

If you cared about actual evidence you would get the actual results in MA regarding their Universal healthcare program which is the model for what Obama has signed. When are you going to address the massive cost increase in MA and the fact that the highest healthcare cost state in the country continues to increase costs? When are you going to recognize that your claim of ER's use going down isn't supported by MA results?

What is it about the liberal ideology that creates such passion for programs that never work?
 
cholla said:
I don't think that you can make a good argument that Obama is not advocating for the control of the american economy with the federal govt owning banks, car companies and now on the way to controling the health care industry.

Using only part of the definition of a word in your answer does not change the original meaning.
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There is no part of the definition that applies. We have loaned money to corporations before. See the Chrysler bailout in 1979.
And the government doesn't control the health care industry. they simple adopted the 1993 conservative plan of individual mandates for health insurance through your choice of private companies.

Personally, I think we should have a true UHC system like the rest of the developed world, but this as close as we could get with moderates in control of the government. Perhaps someday the liberals will manage to get a candidate elected and we can have true UHC.
 
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