I'm hoping you forgot the blue font and actually do realize how silly this post is.
Link: ACA holding...
- Thread starter TIDE-HSV
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I have not advocated for a $150,000 cap on doctor's pay, I think that falls in the straw man department.
There are professional investment and stock brokers that could perhaps help you with investments if you are in the market.
It's not that...it just seems odd when long time posters direct sarcasm at me.
Just when I most need to clutch my pearls, they are out on loan for the holidays.
I originally was responding to another poster's suggestion that doctors (surgeons) accept a salary of $150K-$250 and you chimed in seemingly in support of it, claiming that they could supplement their lower pay with "other investments". Regardless, it's an unrealistic and borderline silly suggestion as a solution to medical cost. So why even discuss it even further? Chanson78 expressed how I feel in a more concise manner than I did.
Many doctors supplement their income with investments, I see nothing silly about pointing that out. I "chimed in" because this is a discussion board and a topic was being discussed.
Happy holidays to you.
Again, what type investments are out there that would be as secure as a paycheck for someone to take that risk? Would you be willing to do the same at your job?
Yep. And I've been saying this since before it became law. And yet there are still a lot of people with whom I interact daily that don't understand that shifting costs and distorting markets are not the same as reducing costs. SMH.
Yep. Thinking wage controls are sound economic policy is some industrial strength derp. That's a sure-fire way to cause shortages. We have people who want more government and less medical professionals in their healthcare. That's just .... um ..... wow.
Well said. For my wife, being a medical professional is a calling. But, that calling is not for free. She was not allowed to go into medicine in Vietnam. When she arrived here she needed to support herself, her infirmed father, her younger siblings, and her mom back in Vietnam. She couldn't make the time sacrifice to be a doctor, so she pursued nursing. Years later when I met her, and we became engaged, I encouraged her to try med school. I knew that's something she wanted, and I could support here while she went back to school. Because we were in our 30s when we met, she had to decide if she wanted the career and maybe not a family. She decided she wanted a family, so she passed on med school. Instead, she decided to be a nurse anesthetist, because it takes fewer years than med school but provides a higher salary than a lot of doctors (family, pediatric, even ob-gyn) can command. Without the vast increase in pay, the decision to forgo several years in salary and take on six figures of cost would be moot. There's a shortage of highly skilled medical professionals now. Suppress salaries and the problem will not be made better.
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Wage control is a great idea as long as it's not "your" wages. Or like "minor" surgery. It's only "minor" when you're not the one going under. LOL!
Something else .... I mentioned that my wife has a calling to help people, so let me elaborate. She is going on a medical mission to the Philippines for three weeks in February/March. If she were still a RN (salary tops out around $75k in the DC area) she would likely not be able to go because she is going out-of-pocket more than $10k to volunteer her services. She's using up her leave and paying for her own transportation and also paying for a good portion of the supplies. It's her current salary (about triple what she was making) that allows her to be able to do this.
(The medical facility is near an orphanage. When my daughter heard about this she packed up most of her toys and clothes to send to the children. It seems my daughter has a calling like my wife. Hopefully, she follows a similar career path. In the meantime, we are looking into mission trips occurring over the summer so both my daughter and I can help. Of course, we'd have to pay our own way. Again, it's our salaries that make this desire to help achievable.)
(The medical facility is near an orphanage. When my daughter heard about this she packed up most of her toys and clothes to send to the children. It seems my daughter has a calling like my wife. Hopefully, she follows a similar career path. In the meantime, we are looking into mission trips occurring over the summer so both my daughter and I can help. Of course, we'd have to pay our own way. Again, it's our salaries that make this desire to help achievable.)
Conditioned to fear? Could very well be. Or, it could be that folks see how the government handles taxes, education, infrastructure, and a myriad of other "issues", and then decide that maybe the government ain't the best stewards of our healthcare.
Well, medicare accounts for roughly 17% of the US population, vs. 67% for private insurance. I wonder if the sheer numbers were reversed, if that chart would look different. Honestly I am surprised that current or former employer paid insurance is so high at 69%. After 18 years in healthcare and hearing all the complaints, I would have guessed it was much lower.Dunno, people seem to like Medicare.
Healthcare costs skyrocketed when physicians and insurance companies got in bed together in the 80's. I was paying the doctor $18 without PMD and at the flip of a switch I paid $15 and BCBS paid another $26 for an office visit. I don't know about the rest of you but that seems like a big raise to me.
It doesn't surprise me that people like things that are free (for them) or heavily subsidized.
Paul Waldman at the Washington Post has a column up today with some relevant thoughts:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...an-health-care-system/?utm_term=.c0f5cdd48a6c
No doubt. But that's missing the point from earlier in the thread. Essentially any comparison between Medicare and private insurance shows that Medicare is able to "negotiate" lower prices and reduces the overall cost of healthcare for the same services performed by the same doctors. If people are interested in actually reducing overall expenditures rather than tossing the hot potato back and forth, this has proven an effective model. The CBO has a quick powerpoint with some basic price comparison data. This slide shows the variance in reimbursement from private insurers compared to Medicare.
Now, what would the consequences of a Medicare-for-all system be for medical professionals? No idea. If overall reimbursement is reduced, hospitals would presumably have to decide between juicy administration bonuses, buying that fancy new MRI machine, or keeping their physicians and staff happy. Personally, I find it hard to imagine a system where public insurance entirely supplants private insurance. More likely, both would exist concurrently, a la the German healthcare system. That said, German physicians get paid trash money, so many of them leave to practice in Switzerland or elsewhere.
But granting all that uncertainty, we do know that a large central negotiator like Medicare can reduce overall U.S. healthcare costs, which is what folks were asking about earlier in the thread. I forget which analysis showed that a Medicare-for-all plan would cut overall U.S. healthcare spending by hundreds of billions over ten years. And costs would drop even more if Medicare were finally permitted to negotiate prescription drug prices. The obvious catch, however, is that the burden of payment would shift largely from insurers and consumers to the federal government. Despite Medicare being far more efficient than private insurers (2% administrative costs vs. 17%, LINK), some are conditioned to reflexively fear this.
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