Eric,
I am trying my best to get regisitered but so far the folks that Dr George recommened I reach out to have not gotten back to me. So I just left her a voicemail. She may still be seeing patients being that it is but 3:30 her time out there. Perhaps she can just put a couple of chairs aside for us. But sure we'd love to see ya there. Lots of AC users in the group from what I understand and I just might log into our office from there to show off FAP for a few moments too at some point.
And yes we really do need to bring these facts and topics to the people, redirect the conversation to the real facts instead of allowing this malintentioned other side to dominate all the "spin" all the time. We need to organize and we need to fight back in the court of public opinion.
But it starts by explaining these difficult concepts as a groundwork to understand all the other points. And most importantly, not sounding popus and self interested, but from the perspective of what is best for both of the two real parties in the relationship, you the docs and they the general public the patients. These folks are just blood sucking leeches draining the good out of your relationship. They the interlopers here that have made this relationship so dysfunctional. They are the ones that need to either be heavily reined in or totally cut out all together.
This should be easy, most people like and trust their PCP, while they have a real distrust and active dislike for their insurance company. With a little work is should work. But nobody does in an organized fashion and that is why I seriously think we need to form a pro-health, pro-patient, anti-medical industrial complex activist group run by good folks in the small and solo side of this business.
We do care, help us to make a decent living and get these SOB's out of our hair and we will gladly work our butts off for our patients. Just think of all the wasted energy we put into feeding this dysfunctional system. Imagine if we could just be free of all their horseCCHIT and be compensated fairly and had all this time back to properly focus on the important issues like caring for the actual patients, running our practices, and continueing medical education... Just imagine. More cash flow, more and better conferences and classes, and the time you need to have deep and meaningful relationships with a proper modest sized patient panel... It would be glorious!!!! But we need to explain the reasons why things are just so messed up and paint a picture of how things might be under a different system that is free of these greedy, for profit, anti-health blood sucking pigs. The more I think of it the more I think if we really framed it in a way almost like the "peace dividend" that these guys are the bloat and the waste, not us, we have been cut to the bone already, we could provide decent care for most people in this nation at a much more reasonable cost. They are the main problem. They make money by over charging for the care and then underpaying us for it and denying it for both our patients and us. It's so simple really...
I have one last question for those of you who seem to know your history better than I: Now granted there were a lot of surgeons and other specialists who were rolling in it back in the day, but honestly I don't seem to ever remember my middle class very left wing school teacher parents ever bitching to much about our primary care docs. As a matter of fact I basically remember them speaking very well of them and having a lot of respect for them. Now I remember my dad bitching frequently about the SOB's from our health insurance company even back then asking for tons of forms and not paying for things and general intentionally getting it wrong. Back when patients had to do their own claims with their insurance carriers. I think that this one area that we should ask the public to take back if they want us to keep doing business with them. Hell it's your insurance company you deal with them, we didn't want them here in the first place.
So tell me how many PCP's were really fleecing their patients??? Because I get the feeling that even back then when they could have, whether is was good old market forces like people would only pay so much for a cold, a well check or what have you, or the good nature of most of the folks on this side of the business that PCP's prbably never got too out of hand. Now I could be wrong, but that is my impression as someone who was a kid, teen and a young adult back then. Sure it was expensive compared to other things in life, but was it really that out of control on the primary care side??? I'm not so sure it ever was. And I sort of see it the same way now. Big hospital bills, procedures that still pay darn well, be not what they used to be, expensive equipment and drugs, while PCP's are the only people who get their
squeezed here.
Thanks much and have a great weekend one and all....
Paul
