Health care crisis

This is a great story from the LA Times. As a family physician, I have a strong opinion on this one.

There IS a health care crisis in this country. It’s not a developing crisis, it’s here and it’s real. It is good that this article pointed out this fact. What’s not good is some of the proposed solutions.

First, I’m okay with increasing the enrollment in medical schools nationwide, but NOT at the expense of lowering admission standards. Some may be alright with this, I think it’s a mistake. In healthcare you can have either quality or quantity, rarely both. I’d rather have quality.

Second, bringing in more foreign medical graduates is a HUGE mistake. See my reason above. Not only are FMGs held to lesser standards at overseas medical schools, but there is also difficulty developing healthy doctor-patient relationships as well as some substantial language barriers. When you’re discussing treatment plans, properly taking prescription medicines and preventive health strategies, a language barrier is a very big deal. Once again, quality or quantity?

Allow me to point out a few reasons for this health care shortage that I feel the politicians aren’t exactly going to be willing to act on:

Lawsuits – This IS the number one problem in American health care, and it must stop. Doctors are being forced out of practice all over the country because of trial lawyers. Not only that, but lawsuits are also limiting the scope of practice for many doctors. For example, as a family physician, I am licensed and trained to deliver routine OB care, but I will NOT do it because of the litigation risk. I am not alone. Couple that with the fact that OB is one of the fields that is suffering the greatest from the health care shortage and you can see my point. There must be sweeping reform here, and must be quick. The problem is that Congress is full of lawyers. They’re not going to change anything.

Medicare – The federal gov’t continues to cut payments to doctors. As a result, more physicians are eliminating medicare from their practice. In many cases, seeing these patients actually incurs an overall LOSS to the bottom line. Remember, this is how we make a living. Keep cutting medicare payments and soon this program will become obsolete because no one will be able to find a doctor who takes these patients.

Push for national health care – Socialized medicine is BAD. Listing the reasons why it’s bad is a whole other post, but I guarantee that if our lawmakers continue pushing for a national health care plan there will be a mass exodus of healthcare professionals out of the health care field. I would rather bag groceries for a living than work in a socialized medicine setting, and I am not alone in this.

Greedy insurance companies – Bottom line, the insurance companies don’t want to pay for things that we as physicians feel are necessary. So on one hand, you have the insurance companies limiting our freedom as physicians, and on the other the lawyers are suing us for NOT doing the tests that the insurance companies won’t pay for. Something has to give.

My solution: Sweeping reform of the insurance businesses and plaintiffs attorneys. Freeze or increase medicare payments to physicians – these things will stop physicians from leaving their profession and encourage more to enter it - and drop corporate taxes. Why drop corporate taxes? Because if you start providing incentives for big business to operate in the US, then they will come to the US (free trade will actually reverse direction and begin to work in our favor), which means more jobs, which means more people with health insurance. Sounds simple and easy….which is probably why our lawmakers haven’t done it yet.