Doctors, Lawyers and the Ownership Society
Fascinating comparison-and-contrast:
Apparently, there has been a steady, driving force from Democratic circles (Hi Pete Stark!) over the years to restrict the existence of physician owned facilities. The assumption is that when doctors own a hospital, they will order more unnecessary tests and procedures because there exists a financial incentive to do so.
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I’m not naive enough to think this doesn’t happen. Doing the right thing for the patient always takes precedence over any financial gain. But at the same time, isn’t this a market driven, capitalistic country?
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I just think the Pete Starks of Washington have it in for us. Once again, it’s an attempt to demonize physicians as profiteers looking to wring everything they can out of the system.
As I noted in a comment:
Contrast that with law firms, which are forbidden by law and ethics codes from allowing anyone but a lawyer from having an equity stake in a law practice [purportedly to avoid any conflict between "serving the interest of the client" and "serving the interest of the owners"].
I’m not sure what the takeaway is from this divergence. But I’m sure that there is indeed a takeaway of some kind.
Thoughts?
(Via Kevin, MD.)
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Over the last few decades, one of the biggest trends in health care has been entrepreneurial doctors’ efforts to strip out the most profitable business from general hospitals.
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When cardiac or orthopedics departments migrate away from the general hospital, it is not easy to find alternative funding for vital public services.
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This “cream-skimming” recalls the classic debate about whether insurers should be allowed to “cherrypick” the healthiest consumers as a business model. This worry is at the heart of various Congressional, administrative, and state moratoria on Medicare reimbursements for the procedures done at specialty hospitals.
Keep this little dose of socialized medicine in mind then next time you go to any non-hospital for any non-emergency medical procedure: You are, somehow, “robbing” the government of your “cream.” By not allowing the government to “spread its costs” (i.e., overcharge) you, you are — somehow — being fundamentally unethical.
Somehow.
The pesky fact that you are either paying for your procedure or for your own insurance (not to mention a lifetime of Medicare taxes that you may or may not be allowed to recoup later in life) apparently doesn’t matter: You are, by not going to a hospital, “exploiting” it. You are, in essence, exploiting people by not letting them exploit you first.
All because you dare, via your own resources, to exercise your own freedom of choice in how best to keep yourself alive.
This is what they consider evil.
As I have said before: The health care socialists will, in the end, attempt to enslave physicians (and nurses and dentists and …). This insane indignation over the “scandal” of private doctors providing private services to private patients is just a small baby step in that direction.
Filed under: Activist Legislators & Nanny Statists, Economics & Finance, Property Rights, Socialized Medicine
There's no enslavement via medicare–the doctors can opt out of the program. But perhaps if they do, they should be forced to pay back the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the government paid to subsidize their medical education.
What part of "in the end" was unclear to you? Anyone who thinks it's a proper function of government to ban doctors from owning their practices (under whatever circumstances) would, for example, have little problem thinking it's also a proper function of government to require physicians, as a condition of keeping their licenses, to undertake compulsory pro bono patients.
And as for subsidized medical education, I see you're still having trouble with the whole "government doesn't pay for anything, only taxpayers do" thing. Keep trying though — maybe this post will help bring you up to speed, or any of these.