"Our" organizations (AMA, etc) do not represent the PCPs best interests.
We "aren't allowed" to unionize.
The insurors have all the cards. They control all the money. We control our services, but when it comes right down to it, we feel like it is immoral not to provide our services if the patient can't pay. They have us over an emotional barrel, and they know it.
Now, there is this constant tension as the insurors (including the government) keep testing the limits of what they can make the "rich doctors" pay for, and how they can force us to behave.
It is a battle played out in Congress, within our organizations (who represent subspecialists by and large), and in the realms of public relations.
While we try to practice medicine full-time and get ourselves paid part-time, the payors have full-time people thinking of nothing but how to withhold payment, and cut costs without causing their organization too much P.R. trouble.
The short-term solution is for solo physicians to join multi-specialty groups that can afford to pay more and more and more for the resources that allow them to comply with the burden placed on them by insurors.
I have looked ahead and declared checkmate for the insurors in not too many moves. I am ready to resign the game.
Let the government and the insurance companies make the regulations as complex as they want. They can make the hurdles as high as they want! They can set up as many hoops as they can find!
If I don't take your money, you can't tell me what to do.
Whether that means cash-only, Medicare non-participation, concierge practice or on-site clinic, dropping out of the system will eventually be the only logical option for the solo physician.
