Roy or is that "Elvis"?,
Glad to see you haven't lost your touch. Actually the conspiracy goes much further up. Do you know the present source of Residency salary funding??? $25 gift certificate to the ER in a major metropolitan area of your choice...... CMS, HHS, that's right? "Jonny tell them what they've won...." "A free trip to years of indentured servitude, at over 100 hour per week under the false pretense of teaching them something useful..." (applause)
Yes, this is a way of funding cheap healthcare for all our Medicare and Medicaid patients in major hospitals. There was a total collapse in Residency funding, GME money, graduate medical education, so around 1968 or 69 what is now basically CMS stepped in to fund the salaried slots in residency programs. So these large instititions are getting these slaves almost for free. Now my wife likes to point out that it costs alot of money to run one of these programs, but goodness knows how many office visits and hospital admissions these guys get to bill for under the suppervised doctors. You had Rx writing privilages by then didn't you? You were Dr whomever by then, right? Probably got to bill at full fee schedule for all your visits and admissions, while our gov't paid your basic salary. Why do you think that even then they busted your chops about documenting and coding the visits. For your education???
I think that Docs all across the country should go back to their med schools and residency programs and share the real horror stories with these poor young sheep being lead to slaughter and tell them the truth. I'd love to see all these programs have a lack of people to fill there slots, by very large amounts. You should all join your alumni associations and tell these kids where it's really at. Seriously, anything less is unethical. At least they should be going in eyes wide open, right? Better yet get them in pre-med before they are already sort of committed. Imagine if all of a sudden the line of new docs suddenly dried up to the point that most schools and residencies were under enrolled by 20-30%. Just what do you think would happen? There would be mayhem in the streets as all sorts of folks couldn't get basic medical care at large hospitals. Good Nurses really run the show, and the residence are the slaves labor that keeps it all going....Then we can continue to outsource another line of work, medicine...Oh that's right; we already are! With nighttime uploads offshore of radiology pictures and images with over night reports and telemedicine. And you thought you were immune....
Oh and try to avoid CIGNA. They just abandoned CNY, I kid you not. We now bill our last few rememaining CIGNA patients thru a NYS based plan called MVP. In the short run that is better for us, because MVP is easier to deal with and has a better fee schedule, but what nuts to just up and leave an area as a national carrier. They won't even try and stay and fight our overly controlling BCBS. And doens't that say something about the monoply like control of our local blues. Now perhaps as much as 65% of our local market; so says our BCBS provider rep.
Will the last American with a good paying job please remember to turn off the lights on your way out the door please? Thanks.
