Reply #29: All I know [View All]

[Yo_Mama]

... is that you don't save money when people on government insurance programs have to go to the ER to get medical care.

This is not even just heartless. It's ridiculous.

I do free computer and IT work for this doctor, because not only is he a great doctor, but he does a lot of charity work. Three weekends in a row we had to open the office when I was there to do computer work on off hours. He is open five days a week and half a day on Saturday. Each time it was a crisis that would have caused a visit to the ER if he had not been willing to see the patient and stabilize the patient. Further, in a least one case if the patient had had to go to the ER and wait it would have turned into a really serious problem.

We have to get real sometime, and IMO now is about the right time for that. Making realistic decisions about Medicare is the key to saving money overall on the program - pretend fixes are going to generate much higher costs. Forcing doctors either to cheat on billing or drop patients cannot be the answer.

Most docs in primary care are making more like 75K or 90K than the figures you see cited - that is, if they are really running a practice that doesn't cater to rich people.