Twenty years ago I was new to practice, and HillaryCare was the big event on the horizon. It made investing in an office building seem scary. Over the years, it seems that Medicare is not a 800 lb gorilla as much as a sloth. Moving and changing, but slowly, and I doubt that things will be severely different in 20 years when I retire.
Whether we are right or left in our politics, we are part of an industry that is almost 20% of GDP, and twice as expensive as it is done in other countries where it is almost as good, and in some ways better. So we are the only ones that don't want change as the debt mounts.
If we were smarter, we would have become dentists or cosmetic surgeons, so we could bill patients directly.
Instead, we chose to become a part of a cottage industry where we are paid by the piece, just like a sweatshop worker. It did seem like easier work in the past, but now the government is determined to control the industry and squeeze every ounce of profit from it. Ten years ago, a Rotary talk by an ophthalmologist was crying about how Medicare had cut his payment for cataracts from close to $3000 per eye down to $250, when a businessman asked him if it only took him 10 minutes to do the work.
So sweatshop workers, are you going to rise up and take control of our industry, and decide how much each should get paid?
It was so interesting to visit Sweden last summer to see my mothers family. I talked with a family practice doctor relative, and their perspective for work is so different when they see themselves working for the government. The patients are not their patients, and the incentive is just to do the job, like making sweatshirts in a factory. As long as you are not the worst worker, you are okay.
Anyway, I digressed. As EasyRider posted, what exactly are they asking for?
