Rants Newsletter

Published Occasionally  by

W. L. Irwin, II, M.D.

Volume  Two

Number One

Who Makes Money in Medicine?

It seems we all are on the hot seat; the doctors for charging too much and doing unneeded test and procedures, the patients for not checking with their gate keeping physician before getting a expert opinion (a specialist), and other health care providers as well.  I still live in a modest house, and those that I work with are mostly the same. I can’t afford the porsche or the second house.  I don’t have a wood paneled office and I don’t wear designer suits.  My hours are attrocious.  But at meetings with hospitals and in the mail every day is some admonisment that my medical judgement and style of ordering tests or prescribing medicine is the problem with the system.  This is as I watch the hospital remodel for the umteenth time the administravie wing, and notice that the administrators wear better clothes than I do.

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When I querry some of my patients whether they are paying any less for insurance, the answer is always no.  When a new patient comes in,  a health care management company has to be called and the visit approved, almost always with a company that has negotiated a discounted physicians fee.  Is it just me, or is the new paradigm in medicine to steal from the workers, and patients, and funnel the procedes of this rape to the insurance companies, the drug companies, the HMO organizations, the management companies, the hospitals, and other third party payors. The business of medicine is no longer patient care, but how to rape the system, the doctors, the patients, and then to admonish us, that we aren’t being cost consciouse enough.  The preferred providors are credentialled on how cheap they can be bought. Not on quality of care given!   More will  be revealed !

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