Surgeon explains some problems in our health care system

[dccrossman]

I thought this a well-written and well-reasoned editorial. I also appreciated the acceptance and then neutering of the term 'socialized medicine'. Editorial written by John Gary Maxwell for StarNews Online.

As he writes in the article, health care is already rationed and socialized, just after health industry profits. Not only that, but the motivations are all wrong. Insurance companies for profit above all else. Doctors for income and liability protection above all else. There's more and better in the portions of the editorial that I did not copy across. I strongly encourage you to go read it.

Health care is already rationed and socialized. We have an unacknowledged disparity between insatiable demand for health care and a capability that cannot meet it. We now find health care rationed on the basis of who will receive care, not on what care will be provided.

Rationing does not apply to emergency care. The unemployed laborer severely injured in a car crash or the farmer who collapses will be given the best care possible. No expense will be spared, all needed consultants will be called, all necessary surgery and definitive care completed.

The patient who presents for planned, scheduled health care gets a different reception. Those needing elective heart surgery, or joint repair, for example, are filtered carefully. Care is rationed by ability to pay.

...

If "spreading the wealth" is socialization, our system is already socialized, with the "haves" paying for the "have-nots" by a tax on the wealthier group. This explains a $15 aspirin, $10,000 to $15,000 antibiotic bills, and bills for heart surgery of $250,000 or more.

We resist "socialized medicine" from the federal government while oblivious that we have embraced socialized medicine delivered -after profits - by the insurance industry.

A crisis is dangerously imminent in which the "haves" will not be able to pay for the increasingly larger segment of "have-nots."

...

Should limitless profit be the motivation to choose medicine as a career? Inequities in earnings have their origin, in large part, because doctors' pay is based on fee for service.

The more tests performed, the more X-rays ordered, every consultant called, every operation done influences income - directly or indirectly.

The solution to these disparities is one that will not sit well with some of my colleagues: Doctors should be paid a base salary commensurate with their time in education and the responsibilities they carry. Increases in pay should be based on such factors as measurements of quality of care, research and teaching. Highly specialized fields requiring extra education and experience, remaining current in new techniques and extra call on nights, weekends and holidays should be compensated.

...

Retired surgeon John Gary Maxwell is former director of the surgical residency program at New Hanover Regional Medical Center and a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina and the University of Utah medical schools.

http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20091205/ARTICLES/912044001/-1/EDITORIAL?Title=John-Gary-Maxwell-Health-reform-from-my-side-of-the-surgery-table&tc=autorefresh">Link to Editorial

Plain text link (stick "www." at the beginning):
starnewsonline.com/article/20091205/ARTICLES/912044001/-1/EDITORIAL?Title=John-Gary-Maxwell-Health-reform-from-my-side-of-the-surgery-table&tc=autorefresh

[JuniperLea]

1. These are the arguments we heard in the very beginning!

Why do we no longer hear about the current system in this light?

Great OP!

:patriot:

We need to do small business a favor...

[lyonn]

2. As we type, these words are being spoken by Dems on Senate

floor. But, to hear these words of wisdom by the Democrats you must listen or at least see the faces of the repubs lie, deceive, distort and rant about health care.