Who hurts the US Healthcare system worse?

Partially true. Not letter to President, but a Letter to Editor. Minor changes.Fact Check: Dr. Starner Jones Asks 'Why Pay for the Care of the Careless?' | Snopes.com

Do not lump all doctors into the same boat. There are a number of specialties that make obscene money, but others that do not.I am familiar with a local Family medicine doctor. She finished school with almost 200k in student loan debt. She makes just about 200k but works 70-90 hours a week. As well as clinic work the docs here cover the emergency room. I do not think she is overpayed.She is going to start a new job at a community health clinic in Duluth next month. Her hours will drop to about 50, but her pay will drop by about 50k.Now the radiologist that works 20-30 hours a week reading xrays and makes 500k+. Yes he is overpayed. The way the whole system is structured is fucked up.

Bullshit. My wife graduated with over $150k in medical school loans and did not live exorbitantly. Medical school was about 20k per year tuition alone. There were about 5k in additional fees.The student also has to live. How much do you think a student should pay to live for a year? 200K in costs for 4 years of medical school is not exorbitant. My wife worked parttime during her first year but had to stop after that. The time commitment for school was to much.Then after medical school she made 40k per year during residency, while her loans were due. $8500 of her pay per year went towards paying loans.ABE Any source for this?Edited by Theodoric, : No reason given.

So no source for you 1/3 claim. Didn't think there was.Did you read what I wrote? Either that or you cannot do basic math.
25k tuition and fees per year. 4 years of medical school.4 x 25 = 100Loans $165k. I said over 150k. How the hell do you get that to equate to tuition being 1/2 of loans? You do not seem to be real good at this percentage thing. But what % of their total living expenses were provided by you or by employment they had? Was their primary residence still your home? You do understand there is a huge difference between undergrad and graduate students don't you. Aren't you special. 25k is not exorbitant as you said in an earlier post.

I think Crash is looking for any and every exception he can find. There are reasons that things are called exceptions. For the vast majority of people any of these methods will work well. For some people they will not work well, that would be the minor percentages you mentioned.Personally, I think crash is just being a dick about this and refusing to acknowledge, as always, that there is something he is not the worlds foremost authority on.He will make absurd arguments in order to be perceived as correct.

Complete and utter bullshit. My wife is a doctor and I know a few doctors. None are going to leave practice because of "Obamacare". Most of the doctors I know are primary care ans they are very excited about the ACA. It means that primary care will at least get paid for a lot of services that they currently get payed very little or not at all for. What the hell are these docs going to do if the quit doctoring? Lobby?Now lets look at the source of this crap. Doctor Patient Medical Association is a Tea party creation and has very close ties to ALEC.

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Did you know that American doctors are so incensed over Obamacare's big-government communist socialism that more than eight in ten are going to quit doctoring? It's true, according to a terribly conducted survey conducted by a shady right-wing group, reported credulously by the Daily Caller, and hyped by Matt Drudge and Fox News.

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"Eighty-three percent of American physicians have considered leaving their practices over President Barack Obama's health care reform law, according to a survey released by the Doctor Patient Medical Association," reported the Daily Caller yesterday. What is the Doctor Patient Medical Association? The Daily Caller didn't seem too interested (beyond calling them "a non-partisan association of doctors and patients") so we'll have to fill in a few gaps.

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The Doctor Patient Medical Association's founder, Kathryn Serkes, is a long-time veteran of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a collection of crackpot malcontents that opposes mandatory vaccinations, wrongly believes undocumented immigrants spread leprosy, and dabbled in Vince Foster conspiracy theorism. The group itself is solidly conservative in its politics: it boasts membership in the National Tea Party Federation; describes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as "Destruction Of Our Medicine," or DOOM; and published a sheet of talking points about the health law to help grassroots activists "beat back the White House spin machine!"

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But what about this improbable survey indicating that more than 3/4 of doctors have considered hanging up the stethoscope rather than tolerate Obamacare? Well, the first thing to point out is that the survey didn't actually ask about the Affordable Care Act. Here's the question and the results as given by DPMA:

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How do current changes in the medical system affect your desire to practice medicine?

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I'm re-energized - 4.6%

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Makes me think about quitting - 82.6%

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Unsure/no opinion - 12.8%

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So they're just assuming that every respondent, upon reading "current changes in the medical system," thought "Obamacare" and nothing else? Doesn't seem too likely. And when asked to give their opinion on these undefined "changes," they were given three options: super-excited, ready to quit, and "unsure." What if they were just slightly dissatisfied? Or cautiously optimistic? The survey left no room for anyone who didn't hold an extreme position.

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All this leads up to 83 percent of respondents saying they are ready to quit their chosen profession even though they don't know what they're quitting over. That's a fairly good clue that we're not dealing with the most reliable sample.

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And how did we arrive at this unreliable sample? Let's take a look at the methodology [emphasis added]:

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The survey was conducted by fax and online from April 18 to May 22, 2012. DPMAF obtained the office fax numbers of 36,000 doctors in active clinical practice, and 16,227 faxes were successfully delivered. Doctors were asked to return their completed surveys by fax, or online at a web address included in the faxed copy. Browser rules prevented doctors from filing duplicate surveys, and respondents were asked to provide personal identification for verification. The response rate was 4.3% for a total of 699 completed surveys.

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They had a tiny sample size culled from a scattershot blast-fax that allowed respondents more than a month to answer their questions. And it seems pretty clear that of the vanishingly small percentage that did actually respond, the vast majority were ideologically sympathetic to the DPMA and had axes in need of grinding. If you look at the survey demographics they provided, you'll see that a full 25 percent of respondents were from the South, which is generally more conservative than the rest of the country.

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The survey question is entirely worthless as a barometer of professional medical opinion regarding the Affordable Care Act. Which is likely the reason no one paid it any mind when DPMA released it last month. But then the dim bulbs at the Breitbart empire picked it up, followed by the Daily Caller and Drudge, leading to its inevitable appearance on Fox News this morning. It's a uniquely awful survey, but it served up a shocking, headline-friendly number, which is why it's driving the right-wing media's coverage of health care policy.

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SourceIt seems all you are hearing is anti-ACA propaganda. Do your own research and vet sources before you jump to conclusions.

Where else can they easily go? Every other western democracy has some sort of socialized medicine. They idea that any percentage of american doctors are going to emigrate to some sort of doctor utopia is ludicrous. There is no other place in the world they can work as little as they do and make as much as they do than they United States. Well then you should probably find new ways to state your questions. Sure sounds like you had jumped to a number of conclusions. You jumped to the conclusion that it was a "complete" catastrophe, when it is not a catastrophe at all.

Again you can not resist any chance to get in a personal attack. There was absolutely no reason for you to add this snide little attack.How about staying out of conversations if all you are doing is making a personal attack. This is crazy. Every time anyone makes any comment that is remotely critical of me you have to add your two cents and pile on about how you think I am a problem.Grow up.Edited by Theodoric, : Subtitle

But then again there is no way to show this is true. It may seem intuitive to you, but it is not necessarily true. IF doctors pay is reduced 10% what else are they going to do, become drug reps?Also, most excess profits in the medical industry do not go to the doctors in the first place. As a matter of fact insurance companies and corporate medical companies are pressing down doctor compensation to some extent already.One travesty of our system is that primary care physicians are the least compensated. There are certain specialties that make an obscene amount of money.In my experience the doctors on the lower end of the pay scale seem to get the most reward from their jobs.CS,If you are going to respond please be civil. If you are going to just make personal attacks, I don't want to hear them.

That is not how medicine works. How much a doctor is paid is not a reflection upon their superiority.Pay is contingent upon location and specialty. Not quality. A busier doctor is not a higher paid doctor. A busier doctor is also not a better doctor. There are lot of poor doctors that are thought of as the "good" doctor. I guarantee you that a doctor that is loose with the prescriptions is much harder to get in to see than a doctor that is not. I also guarantee you that that doctor is not paid more than the other doctors in the practice based upon how popular he is.There are many factors built into doctor pay. High-end doctors are not necessarily better doctors.Using your argument rural doctors are not worth much at all.

That isn't really a logical extension of the data. There could be numerous reasons why there are foreign doctors in the UK. The lower pay does not automatically mean more openings. If this is true why are they going to UK at all. The US has lots of openings for foreign doctors. If pay was so important why is there a doctor shortage in the US. Do you have evidence for doctors being disincentivised? If so why are only the "best" doctors being disincentivised?Again I don't think what you have presented leads to this conclusion, logical or not.

Your response does not have anything to do with my statement. You are also making judgements about me that you have no evidence for. You see how your response is completely unrelated to my comment. I have never said anything about not be willing to pay more for better service. Why would you even make such a comment? You seem to be throwing up a strawman and the rest of this thread is a gish gallop from you.For example your claim about willing to pay your doctor more and some sort of nefariousness by "obamacare" that would prevent you from doing so. The ACA does not set doctors pay. The ACA is not socialized medicine and doctors are not government employees. I have no idea what your disjointed argument is even trying to present. Doctors are paid usually on RVU's(you can do the research). There is now a move away from strict RVU's to also including quality metrics(outcomes) and patient satisfaction. This is a natural industry transition and ACA has nothing to do with how doctors are paid, no matter what the pay model is.

Please explain how. I at least have the decency to explain how you responses are lacking. All you give me are petty throw away lines. How can I improve if you don't give any meaningful feedback.

But it is not an either or proposition.Europe seems to be doing a good job of having motivated doctors and a good total medical system. Perfect? No, nothing is. But seemingly much better than US or Cuban models.

But this is all just something in your fantasy isn't it. No one has proposed any such thing. That is something dictated by insurance rules, not the ACA. The government has nothing to do with who you can see. Even insurance companies are not allowed to tell you who you can see. They can have different deductibles and amount they pay, but they can not tell you who you have to see. For example, my eye doctor was out of our network so we took the lower benefits and paid the rest ourselves.(Dropped it this year since it wasn't worth it.) Well since the first two parts of your comment are not true or remotely realistic, then final conclusion is just as ridiculous.Before you criticize the US medical system and the ACA you probably should do some research as to what it really is like. You are developing ridiculous scenarios that have not even been proposed.FYI, here are the latest figures on Physician compensation SourceI think a lot of people would think some of these figures are ridiculous and detrimental to total health care in this country.I can guarantee you that a family medicine doc, working at a community health center barely gets on to this chart.