Which specialty will get hurt the most by Socialized Healthcare?

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filter07

filter07

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Socialized Healthcare is becoming more and more of a reality everyday.

The proletariats are out for blood, and it's only a matter of time before physicians are on the chopping block.

Which specialty gets the biggest screw?

Anesthesiology?
Radiology?
Radiation Oncology?
Ortho?

Will Internal Medicine or Family Medicine actually make a higher salary than Urology in the future?

It's probably all speculation at this point, but maybe someone has some insight.
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Radiology is going down!
 
filter07 said:
Socialized Healthcare is becoming more and more of a reality everyday.

The proletariats are out for blood, and it's only a matter of time before physicians are on the chopping block.

Which specialty gets the biggest screw?

Anesthesiology?
Radiology?
Radiation Oncology?
Ortho?
Click to expand...

Anesthesiology is at risk because beancounter minded government types and MBAs see the CRNA as a plug in replacement at half the cost. Diagnostic Radiology is at risk because with modern technology a radiologist at an overseas reading room can Nighthawk a study just as easily as one here can. The stroke of a politician's pen could extinguish these two fields in America, and I see them being at the highest risk.

Radiation Oncology is safer, I would think. At least from nationalization. Denying treatment to cancer patients makes for really bad PR. Then again, we have a president who was ready to drop insurance coverage for wounded/crippled veterans.

Whether or not radiation based therapy will be as widely used as they are today in 20 or 30 years is anyone's guess.

Ortho is also relatively safe. It's a good idea to work in a field that society decides to devote a lot of resources to. Here, that field is sports. Orthopedic surgeons (and FM trained sports med docs) take care of ankles, knees, hips, and upper extremities that get paid 5 million, 10 million, or more just to sign their name.

Will Internal Medicine or Family Medicine actually make a higher salary than Urology in the future?
Click to expand...

I doubt that will ever happen.

It's probably all speculation at this point, but maybe someone has some insight.
Click to expand...

Yep.
 
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I don't think any of us are going to come out ahead in this deal... I think the urologists and interventional cardiologists are going to be hit harder percentage wise but still be making far more than the PCPs. In the end, though, all of us are going to be making less if socialized medicine comes about...
 
All I know is who's getting hurt now.

The uninsured.

http://www.pnhp.org/

Let the flaming begin.
 
All patients will be hurt with socialized medicine.
 
Every speciality will be hurt. All specialties will be reduced to about the same salary +/- $25,000. This means the high earners now will be fall the most. Primary care will have the lowest relative drop.

Ditto above. Patients will ultimately be hurt the most.

Here is a subjective snap shot of healthcare (today) in the UK. Seeing as how this is often the cited model of care that our country should aspire towards:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/

Here are the specific links to the articles that appeared on 3/22/09. Here are the specific links below for when the above link cycles into a new day.

* Imagine that doctors are still gaming the system even in europe!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...t-working.html

* Imagine that lawyers are still parasites even in europe!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...of-pounds.html

* A newspaper has put together a list of things to heal their hospitals. It's that bad there.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...Hospitals.html

* Poor sanitation and poor nurse/physician staffing at this hospital. So bad it required two articles!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...-warnings.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...den-story.html
"Had they become so demoralised they failed to recognise the crisis developing in front of them? Or were they brow beaten into submission by a management who, according to the commission, had become so obsessed by achieving coveted Foundation Trust status that it put the meeting of bureaucratic targets above providing a decent standard of care?"

This was just one random newspaper in the UK one random day.
 
Old_Mil said:
Anesthesiology is at risk because beancounter minded government types and MBAs see the CRNA as a plug in replacement at half the cost. Diagnostic Radiology is at risk because with modern technology a radiologist at an overseas reading room can Nighthawk a study just as easily as one here can. The stroke of a politician's pen could extinguish these two fields in America, and I see them being at the highest risk.
Click to expand...

The problem is that Nighthawk radiologists are all American trained MDs who happen to practice abroad. It's not like there's a large population ready to receive this outsourced work.

So I'm not sure why socialized medicine would shunt the radiology reads overseas. Unless the president is urging an exodus of radiologists to foreign countries so they can all participate in Nighthawking services? :confused:
 
Candidates for getting screwed:

Ortho, Ophtho, Gas, Rads, Rad/Onc, ENT, Derm, EM, Uro

vs.

IM, FM, Peds

My view is that all will experience a crunch but IM/FM/peds less so than the above specialties. The amount the specialties will get hit is a function of their "electiveness" (i.e. what %age of procedures are elective or fringe and what are essential) and how well they can be replaced by midlevels. So, a good amount of ortho is critical, same with uro, ENT, and rad/onc. Rads can be outsourced. Anesthesia can be given to CRNAs. Ophtho has a good amount of electives (i.e. the cataracts patient who just doesn't get his lens replaced). Derm is mostly elective. EM will probably do well.
 
Good Solutions said:
Every speciality will be hurt. All specialties will be reduced to about the same salary +/- $25,000. This means the high earners now will be fall the most. Primary care will have the lowest relative drop.
Click to expand...

I wonder if there will be some sort of adjustment for pediatric cardiac surgeons with a minimum of 10 years of training compared to an internist with 3 years of training.
 
Good Solutions said:
Every speciality will be hurt. All specialties will be reduced to about the same salary +/- $25,000. This means the high earners now will be fall the most. Primary care will have the lowest relative drop.

Ditto above. Patients will ultimately be hurt the most.

Here is a subjective snap shot of healthcare (today) in the UK. Seeing as how this is often the cited model of care that our country should aspire towards:
[links snipped]
Click to expand...
I don't know anyone who supports universal health coverage who thinks we should "aspire" to the UK model. No one with any knowledge of international health policy would believe that a completely nationalized health system would be the best option for the US.

The system most aligned with what is believed would work best in the US, and from what I understand is closest to what Obama supports, is the system in the Netherlands which was instituted in 2006 and is working very well. It involves compulsory insurance with the patient's choice of private companies, and a pooled-risk safety net plan for those who cannot afford to pay premiums. No government agency decides who gets what services, nor sets physician salaries. And unlike the system we have now - where millions of people have no coverage whatsoever except "charity" which comes full-price out of our tax dollars anyway, and those that do have coverage only have what comes with their jobs (which people are losing by the thousands) for crippling premiums - it's actually humane.

I would love to hear any evidence for how patients would "suffer" from having access to affordable healthcare.
 
You are wasting your breath.

When people ignore facts and act as if foxnews is the gospel, all you can do is just smile and shake your head.

RTrain said:
I don't know anyone who supports universal health coverage who thinks we should "aspire" to the UK model. No one with any knowledge of international health policy would believe that a completely nationalized health system would be the best option for the US.

The system most aligned with what is believed would work best in the US, and from what I understand is closest to what Obama supports, is the system in the Netherlands which was instituted in 2006 and is working very well. It involves compulsory insurance with the patient's choice of private companies, and a pooled-risk safety net plan for those who cannot afford to pay premiums. No government agency decides who gets what services, nor sets physician salaries. And unlike the system we have now - where millions of people have no coverage whatsoever except "charity" which comes full-price out of our tax dollars anyway, and those that do have coverage only have what comes with their jobs (which people are losing by the thousands) for crippling premiums - it's actually humane.

I would love to hear any evidence for how patients would "suffer" from having access to affordable healthcare.
Click to expand...
 
How can patients be hurt? How about the VA. 9 hours for a STAT CT scan, and the private hospitals take up their slack and treat patients when they are "full" or don't have that particular coverage.

Who would take up that slack when every hospital in the US is as inefficient as the VA? How about rationing care and 2 year waits for surgery. There are plenty of ways people are harmed by a nationalized system.

McGill, remember the numbers you posted were BEFORE expenses per the link. Take off the rent and payment for the staff and those numbers don't look nearly as good. It wasn't clear if that was before or after tax, but as high as the tax rate is there if it was before tax then those numbers would really take a nosedive.

Everybody wants to harp on "the uninsured" well over half are uninsured BY CHOICE. You know Bill Gates counts in that "uninsured" number don't you?

Healthcare is NOT a right. If you say that you are saying that people have the RIGHT to FORCE ME TO WORK FOR THEM FOR FREE.

What's next, everybody has a right to a car? How about forcing farmers to work for free because everybody has a right to food? Looks like we are going that direction on housing as I am being forced to pay the mortgage on people that bought more house than they could afford and now I am paying for their poor decisions.

They have the right to pay for helathcare themselves in whichever way they can, whether that be through cash, insurance, barter, or charity care but they DON'T have the right to force me to do anything.

I will do charity care, but I will do it on my terms because it is my time and my money that I am losing. Nobody has the right to force me to treat them for free.
 
Everyone is losing focus of the real reason US healthcare system needs reform- Healthcare insurance industry. It has become the Deny-Healthcare Insurance industry at this time. Reforming and regulating the insurance companies will solve many of our problems. We don't want too much government but we should have "some government" regulating the insurance companies.

I like the Netherlands example cited by a poster above.
 
well said, OTD... people are uninsured by choice. it's all about priorities. if cell phones and a nicer car are more important, then there goes the insurance.
 
Primary care specialties have already gotten screwed.

Primary care- at the forefront of change! (We have to be proud of something!)
 
Looking at how things are run in europe, when and if this kind of model will be introduced in the US, every specialty will be on the same pay scale. A surgeon will NOT make more than a FM doc on average. It's a typical socialistic system really, and this is the case regardless of nationalized health system (UK, france, italy, spain...) vs private insurance syst (switzerland, netherlands...). The alleged upcoming revolution will only spare derm and plastics, where elective procedures represent a sort of financial life boat...
 
RTrain said:
I don't know anyone who supports universal health coverage who thinks we should "aspire" to the UK model. No one with any knowledge of international health policy would believe that a completely nationalized health system would be the best option for the US.

The system most aligned with what is believed would work best in the US, and from what I understand is closest to what Obama supports, is the system in the Netherlands which was instituted in 2006 and is working very well. It involves compulsory insurance with the patient's choice of private companies, and a pooled-risk safety net plan for those who cannot afford to pay premiums. No government agency decides who gets what services, nor sets physician salaries. And unlike the system we have now - where millions of people have no coverage whatsoever except "charity" which comes full-price out of our tax dollars anyway, and those that do have coverage only have what comes with their jobs (which people are losing by the thousands) for crippling premiums - it's actually humane.

I would love to hear any evidence for how patients would "suffer" from having access to affordable healthcare.
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An excellent and thoughtful post. The anti-nationalized healthcare crowd focuses on the worst systems and ignores the best.

A facsimile of the NHS in britain is really not on the table over here. The most ardent socialist Democrat couldn't force that through congress in his wildest dreams.

Out of 10 docs/med students opposed to nationalized coverage 9.5 of them are just worried about their salary. If we figured out a way to cover everyone and guarantee every doctor $300k/year opposition would fall away.
 
Every civilized country (and 99% of the rest of the countries) have some sort of basic healthcare provided to its citizens.

Do you really believe that it is a "socialist" or "leftist" phenomenon? It certainly isn't. In fact, it is the most fiscally and socially convervative of ideologies that encourage programs such as Medicare.

Have you ever wondered why? It is actually quite simple if you take a moment to reflect on it.



OTD said:
Healthcare is NOT a right. If you say that you are saying that people have the RIGHT to FORCE ME TO WORK FOR THEM FOR FREE.

What's next, everybody has a right to a car? How about forcing farmers to work for free because everybody has a right to food? Looks like we are going that direction on housing as I am being forced to pay the mortgage on people that bought more house than they could afford and now I am paying for their poor decisions.

They have the right to pay for helathcare themselves in whichever way they can, whether that be through cash, insurance, barter, or charity care but they DON'T have the right to force me to do anything.

I will do charity care, but I will do it on my terms because it is my time and my money that I am losing. Nobody has the right to force me to treat them for free.
Click to expand...
 
This thread makes me sad.

So we provide all these people; lazy, illegal, otherwise with insurance on the backs of every hard working citizen of this country and in the process destroy our health care system as we know it? Will these grateful people even use their insurance wrought off the backs of the masses? It's not like anyone in this country is denied care, anyone can go into a ER and be admitted just fine, anybody who has spent any appreciable time in the ER knows this. All we are currently seeing is the end of America as we know it and this is colorfully illustrated by a wonderful Canadian in this thread. Wont be the land of the free much longer.
 
filter07 said:
Socialized Healthcare is becoming more and more of a reality everyday.

The proletariats are out for blood, and it's only a matter of time before physicians are on the chopping block.

Which specialty gets the biggest screw?

Anesthesiology?
Radiology?
Radiation Oncology?
Ortho?

Will Internal Medicine or Family Medicine actually make a higher salary than Urology in the future?

It's probably all speculation at this point, but maybe someone has some insight.
Click to expand...

I wish I knew. I interviewed for anesthesioloy and did several anesthesiology rotations in med school but the whole CRNA issued scared me away. I do not know about radiology, radiation oncology, or ortho as far as future reimbursement.
 
novastorm said:
This thread makes me sad.

So we provide all these people; lazy, illegal, otherwise with insurance on the backs of every hard working citizen of this country and in the process destroy our health care system as we know it? Will these grateful people even use their insurance wrought off the backs of the masses? It's not like anyone in this country is denied care, anyone can go into a ER and be admitted just fine, anybody who has spent any appreciable time in the ER knows this. All we are currently seeing is the end of America as we know it and this is colorfully illustrated by a wonderful Canadian in this thread. Wont be the land of the free much longer.
Click to expand...

:laugh: I can almost hear Rush Limbaugh on your radio in the background as you type out this ever-so-indoctrinated response laden with emotionally charged canards and no real substance.

Yes, indeed. Those lazy illegals should be turned away from the ER so they can spread TB and STDs and other highly contagious diseases to the rest of the "better half" of society. No wait, that is exactly why Medicaid exists!:idea: It exists to protect society from disease and to keep the workforce healthy enough to prevent a collapse of OUR GREAT CONSUMER ECONOMY!

I know. You never thought of that, did ya? Probably because Rush didn't tell you to think it...lol...:sleep:
 
McGillGrad said:
:laugh: I can almost hear Rush Limbaugh on your radio in the background as you type out this ever-so-indoctrinated response laden with emotionally charged canards and no real substance.

Yes, indeed. Those lazy illegals should be turned away from the ER so they can spread TB and STDs and other highly contagious diseases to the rest of the "better half" of society. No wait, that is exactly why Medicaid exists!:idea: It exists to protect society from disease and to keep the workforce healthy enough to prevent a collapse of OUR GREAT CONSUMER ECONOMY!

I know. You never thought of that, did ya? Probably because Rush didn't tell you to think it...lol...:sleep:
Click to expand...

It really has very little to do with obama, this whole mess has been a long time in the making and really has very little to do with anyone currently alive except possibly accelerating the situation :) If you can possibly hazard out what im saying I may consider continuing the conversation but so far...way off. Besides the education bubble is the next big problem for the country.
 
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novastorm said:
This thread makes me sad.

So we provide all these people; lazy, illegal, otherwise with insurance on the backs of every hard working citizen of this country and in the process destroy our health care system as we know it? Will these grateful people even use their insurance wrought off the backs of the masses? It's not like anyone in this country is denied care, anyone can go into a ER and be admitted just fine, anybody who has spent any appreciable time in the ER knows this. All we are currently seeing is the end of America as we know it and this is colorfully illustrated by a wonderful Canadian in this thread. Wont be the land of the free much longer.
Click to expand...


What makes me sad is that 54 y/o Caucasian woman who used to see me in outpatient clinic for depression, worked her butt off in her small cleaning business with her husband, had severe degenerative knee disease and needed knee replacement, did not qualify for Medicaid, and did not make enough money to pay for exorbitant premiums demanded by private insurance companies.

What makes me sad is that 61 y/o black man who worked all his life making cars for a company like GM, is now seeing his healthcare and retirement benefits cut by the failing company. He has HTN, DM, and colon cancer, does not qualify for Medicare/Medicaid, has to choose between his medications and food every month.

What makes me sad is that 33 y/o young man whose MS was suddenly declared a pre-existing condition by the insurance company who bought a solo plan from.

There are countless stories like this. Do you even realize the amount of burden the ER visits you speak so highly of have on taxpayer dollars? This is the weakest argument I have heard against comprehensive healthcare reform.
 
mercaptovizadeh said:
Candidates for getting screwed:

Ortho, Ophtho, Gas, Rads, Rad/Onc, ENT, Derm, EM, Uro

vs.

IM, FM, Peds

My view is that all will experience a crunch but IM/FM/peds less so than the above specialties. The amount the specialties will get hit is a function of their "electiveness" (i.e. what %age of procedures are elective or fringe and what are essential) and how well they can be replaced by midlevels. So, a good amount of ortho is critical, same with uro, ENT, and rad/onc. Rads can be outsourced. Anesthesia can be given to CRNAs. Ophtho has a good amount of electives (i.e. the cataracts patient who just doesn't get his lens replaced). Derm is mostly elective. EM will probably do well.
Click to expand...

Ive heard/read this a lot, but dont quite understand the reasoning. Could you elaborate why you think EM will do well in the future?
 
DCDAWG said:
Ive heard/read this a lot, but dont quite understand the reasoning. Could you elaborate why you think EM will do well in the future?
Click to expand...

Emergencies. You'll delay getting a cataracts lens replaced but you won't delay getting stitches for a huge bleeding gash on your head.

Also, if insurance crashes more and more people will go straight to the ED for trivial issues.
 
mercaptovizadeh said:
Emergencies. You'll delay getting a cataracts lens replaced but you won't delay getting stitches for a huge bleeding gash on your head.

Also, if insurance crashes more and more people will go straight to the ED for trivial issues.
Click to expand...

Makes sense.
Ideally, new health care changes will increase insurance and primary care coverage for patients that are currently flooding EDs with non-emergency medical complaints- right? If implementation of these plans is successful, theoretically EDs should be less crowded. I am not sure how this will affect the field as a whole. Obviously it should be beneficial to patients- which is the top priority. But, this is a thread questioning how physicians and their fields will be affected- so my question is will the decrease in patients in EDs decrease salary for ED physicians? It could be argued that it wont have any affect at all, because many of the patients that wont be coming into the ED will be uninsured patients that the hospital is not getting compensated for anyway. In which case, it may actually make ED physician's jobs much easier while keeping salary up...?
 
Ultimately we can't know how this will all pan out. This is because it's like that unsolvable three-body problem in physics: too many interacting players.

1.) The natural tendency of economic hardship - elective procedures drop, essentials tend to remain. Then again, if you have no money whatsoever, you can't get your heart fixed, either.

2.) The government - socialization of healthcare throws a spanner in the works. I think we all tend to think that procedures and subspecialties will at least take a bigger hit than primary care, but will likely still be earning more. On the other hand, primary care is a much larger base, so hitting them a small amount can save more than hitting the dermatologists a lot. Midlevels are an additional confounder.

3.) Private insurance - tends to follow government, but could go either way. If government lowers quality of universal healthcare to a new low, insurance may follow suite or it may take over the upper niche and be the "high quality" option for those who can pay for it - who may, in turn, decide that it's better for them to pay as they go and drop insurance altogether because they can afford it.
 
mercaptovizadeh said:
2.) The government - socialization of healthcare throws a spanner in the works. I think we all tend to think that procedures and subspecialties will at least take a bigger hit than primary care, but will likely still be earning more. On the other hand, primary care is a much larger base, so hitting them a small amount can save more than hitting the dermatologists a lot. Midlevels are an additional confounder.
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The problem is that primary care is unpopular enough as it currently stands. Hitting them a little bit more (even if it's a small amount) could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.
 
asmallchild said:
The problem is that primary care is unpopular enough as it currently stands. Hitting them a little bit more (even if it's a small amount) could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.
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Well, one would think so, but who's going to do the diagnosing? If they farm out IM/peds to NPs and PAs we're going to have a lot of zebras and complex cases slipping through and people getting hurt. There will be a backlash.

Unfortunately or fortunately, things like IM, peds, and general surgery are still appealing to a lot of people because of the wide variety of what they see and do. It will take a significantly greater hit than what we've seen so far people to abandon these altogether.

I think we can all agree, however, that the current climate is untenable. Specialties that do light organ-specific diagnosis and relatively light procedures are getting substantially better compensation for substantially less work than the cores. And yes, that does apply to the IM subspecialties as well (allergy/immuno being a particularly grotesque example).
 
TheWowEffect said:
What makes me sad is that 54 y/o Caucasian woman who used to see me in outpatient clinic for depression, worked her butt off in her small cleaning business with her husband, had severe degenerative knee disease and needed knee replacement, did not qualify for Medicaid, and did not make enough money to pay for exorbitant premiums demanded by private insurance companies.

What makes me sad is that 61 y/o black man who worked all his life making cars for a company like GM, is now seeing his healthcare and retirement benefits cut by the failing company. He has HTN, DM, and colon cancer, does not qualify for Medicare/Medicaid, has to choose between his medications and food every month.

What makes me sad is that 33 y/o young man whose MS was suddenly declared a pre-existing condition by the insurance company who bought a solo plan from.

There are countless stories like this. Do you even realize the amount of burden the ER visits you speak so highly of have on taxpayer dollars? This is the weakest argument I have heard against comprehensive healthcare reform.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry I just wanted to jump on this one. I did not mean everyone, hence sticking in the otherwise. I do think SOMEBODY would benefit from health care reform but until people give up things like the data plans on their cellphones, blackberry's, cable, satellite tv, broadband internet, houses they cant afford, cars they cant afford, I will have no mercy on them. This is America after all. Cable costs about 100 bucks a month and guess what so does insurance. Guess what most people choose...not the insurance. We have a core societal issue here that no amount of reform is going to fix. I mean we penalize people in most states who don't pay for car insurance...why not do a similar thing for health care. Does everyone need free car insurance too?

What is worse about your example is you're assuming that the government will even pay for a 54 year old woman's knee replacement, etc, what if they decide that's not worth it and wont cover it and we've abolished insurance...then what?

However aside from all this. I would be happy to destroy..er..reform our health care system if perhaps the economy had recovered at that point..

I just felt I should add there was a point in this countries history where we took care of the poor, the sick, the less fortunate and it really does pain me that we are moving so irrevocably away from the ideals such as that and the ones that built this country that they will be gone forever.

I think that's all I have to say about this.
 
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novastorm said:
I'm sorry I just wanted to jump on this one. I did not mean everyone, hence sticking in the otherwise. I do think SOMEBODY would benefit from health care reform but until people give up things like the data plans on their cellphones, blackberry's, cable, satellite tv, broadband internet, houses they cant afford, cars they cant afford, I will have no mercy on them. This is America after all. Cable costs about 100 bucks a month and guess what so does insurance. Guess what most people choose...not the insurance. We have a core societal issue here that no amount of reform is going to fix. I mean we penalize people in most states who don't pay for car insurance...why not do a similar thing for health care. Does everyone need free car insurance too?

What is worse about your example is you're assuming that the government will even pay for a 54 year old woman's knee replacement, etc, what if they decide that's not worth it and wont cover it and we've abolished insurance...then what?

However aside from all this. I would be happy to destroy..er..reform our health care system if perhaps the economy had recovered at that point..

I just felt I should add there was a point in this countries history where we took care of the poor, the sick, the less fortunate and it really does pain me that we are moving so irrevocably away from the ideals such as that and the ones that built this country that they will be gone forever.

I think that's all I have to say about this.
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What kind of quality insurance can a 61 year old person purchase for $100 per month. Let's get real.

Also, charity is in decline because religion in the West is dying (most charities were religious) and because people can always rationalize that the disadvantaged can always fall back on government social services.
 
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Whoa there, big boy. The days when relief services were entirely run and administered by private church groups led to some seriously inadequate and inequitable distribution, not to mention Dickensian workhouses.

On the other hand, gruel would go far to combat the growing obesity epidemic...
 
BlondeDocteur said:
Whoa there, big boy. The days when relief services were entirely run and administered by private church groups led to some seriously inadequate and inequitable distribution, not to mention Dickensian workhouses.

On the other hand, gruel would go far to combat the growing obesity epidemic...
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I didn't realize church charities were running industrial sweatshops. I thought it was the industrialists.

I agree with you, though, that there's a tendency to idealize the past for some reason.
 
I think we would never have a system like Sweden, a full socialized health care here even if the goverment want, but we need to have a modified version of european health care system in US. let's be real about this country, this country has the best and worst facilitis for patients among developed countries. I think we, doctors here in US are just devil advocate for the giant insurance/pharma companies. Nobody threatens our teritories if we have a more healthy/responsible society in terms of health coverage.
And I think if we have a general health coverage, the PCP/IM/FM would be the biggest winners.(there would be a huge demand for them) and Derm/Radio would be losers. as a general fact any specialties with invasive procedre would have moer income than others w/o procedures
 
To put it as simply and curtly as possible our society fails to work hard, sacrifice and accept responsibility for its actions. Its clearly evident in every day life and on this forum. Its also illustrated with the actions and ideals proposed by congress and the current and past administrations. "America" cannot co-exist with these "socialized programs" that's the simple truth and the fact everyone is ok with this disturbs the hell out of me.
 
*Snort!* My health insurance as a healthy, non-smoking, <24BMI 24yr old with no diagnosable illnesses (aside from a desire to be a physician) was almost $200/month.

I'm far from 24 now, but still healthy as an ox. :)

-X

mercaptovizadeh said:
What kind of quality insurance can a 61 year old person purchase for $100 per month. Let's get real.
Click to expand...
 
novastorm said:
I just felt I should add there was a point in this countries history where we took care of the poor, the sick, the less fortunate and it really does pain me that we are moving so irrevocably away from the ideals such as that and the ones that built this country that they will be gone forever.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what we are going to do by reforming our healthcare insurance system, and this in no way means a single payer system.
 
novastorm said:
This thread makes me sad.

So we provide all these people; lazy, illegal, otherwise with insurance on the backs of every hard working citizen of this country and in the process destroy our health care system as we know it? Will these grateful people even use their insurance wrought off the backs of the masses? It's not like anyone in this country is denied care, anyone can go into a ER and be admitted just fine, anybody who has spent any appreciable time in the ER knows this. All we are currently seeing is the end of America as we know it and this is colorfully illustrated by a wonderful Canadian in this thread. Wont be the land of the free much longer.
Click to expand...

I will rather provide free healthcare to illegals and lazy Americans than to keep bonusing insurance execs off my sweat. I hate these insurance mofos so much that I will personally take my chances with socialized healthcare before I support those fools.
 
There is no such thing as FREE.

Someone always pays for it whether it is insurance company or the government.

Ultimately, we as a soceity will pay.

We are already "universalized" and that is part of the problem.

When we add more people to the doles of the govt, we get RATIONED care.

RATIONED CARE (i.e. universal care) --> All those hard working people you guys are concerned about, they will not get the treatment. The govt will deny them. Because the govt believes that an old person is not worth much to society. Why? b/c treating an old person would cost the govt too much. Except the govt is much more inefficient at doing this than private insurance. Atleast with private insurance, if you have the means to pay you can get good care.

Think before you speak.

The dems have made a system where illegals and the poor get preferential treatment over the working class. Now they want to include the working class and destroy whatever is left of the private insurance. Only result will be an inability to get treatment for anyone.
 
Rush, is that you? Are you on an oxycontin binge again...lol

The drugs are making you loopy, Rush.



Lonestar said:
There is no such thing as FREE.

Someone always pays for it whether it is insurance company or the government.

Ultimately, we as a soceity will pay.

We are already "universalized" and that is part of the problem.

When we add more people to the doles of the govt, we get RATIONED care.

RATIONED CARE (i.e. universal care) --> All those hard working people you guys are concerned about, they will not get the treatment. The govt will deny them. Because the govt believes that an old person is not worth much to society. Why? b/c treating an old person would cost the govt too much. Except the govt is much more inefficient at doing this than private insurance. Atleast with private insurance, if you have the means to pay you can get good care.

Think before you speak.

The dems have made a system where illegals and the poor get preferential treatment over the working class. Now they want to include the working class and destroy whatever is left of the private insurance. Only result will be an inability to get treatment for anyone.
Click to expand...
 
McGillGrad said:
Rush, is that you? Are you on an oxycontin binge again...lol

The drugs are making you loopy, Rush.
Click to expand...

the ad hominem argument ladies and gentlemen....lets give a big round of applause :rolleyes:
 
I have cousin who works as a pathologist in Norway and Sweden and he makes 500k$/year. So, I guess not pathology.
 
Bill_Brasky said:
the argument ladies and gentlemen....lets give a big round of applause :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

You seem to be ignorant of the definition of the term "ad hominem." :laugh::laugh::laugh:

This just keeps getting better!!
 
psychforme said:
I have cousin who works as a pathologist in Norway and Sweden and he makes 500k$/year. So, I guess not pathology.
Click to expand...

You should ask him about working with the gov't to let old people die...lol... because apparently that is what is happening in universal healthcare :)
 
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