Comments on: Many Doctors Opting Out of Medicare

By: mentalpestilence

mentalpestilence — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 04:26:39 +0000

I am going to take two excerpts from Dr Donald Barr’s (MD, PhD) book Introduction to U.S. Health Policy that shows two disparate positions regarding this autonomy in more detail. The first is from Dr R. M. Sade and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1971:

“Medical care is neither a right nor a privilege: it is a service that is provided by doctors and others to people who with to purchase it”.

On the other hand, we have the position of Dr. John Bowman who released this statement in 1918:

“As a people we are accustomed to hospital service; we look upon that service no longer as a luxury which we may buy, but rather as an inherent right…we regard the right to health today as we regard the right to life”.

In the former view, either you have the money to pay what a doctor will charge or you don’t. These are the doctors who feel they shouldn’t have to comply with a system that won’t let them freely charge what they wish. The latter view suggested that we should all be able to receive care when necessary. If that means accepting a discounted rate on services or supporting a single-payer national insurance system than so be it.

I interpret the former view as one that flirts with selfishness. And being a doctor requires a bit of something quite the opposite: selflessness. The motivation to be a doctor seems that it should stem from wanting to help others even when the price isn’t right. Although I understand, not everyone can walk around wielding their services for free. No one can live off of that, and certainly no one expects their doctor to work for free.

http://www.mentalpestilence.com

By: Steve Parker, M.D.

Steve Parker, M.D. — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:32:43 +0000

And when people end up “with little to no access to medical care,” the government will come to the rescue with mandatory socialized medicine, the solution to the problem government created.

I see a pattern here.

-Steve

By: hashmd

hashmd — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:05:15 +0000

Then we have the British system where there is the National Health docs, and then the cash pay private system. If your community has enough cash paying people, you can eek out a living.

By: igloodoc

igloodoc — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:08:11 +0000

WC – The only reason we Docs can opt out of Medicare is that there are other plans to bill. My worry is of the Hawaii kids care scenario. The Government sets up a plan so cheap that everyone jumps to it, and drops private insurance. Private plans quickly disappear, What would the medical community do when faced with the alternatives of take cash or take the government health plan that insures all the people?