Regardless of Supreme Court rulings, few would be oblivious enough to argue our healthcare system works. From life expectancy numbers that dismally reveal the US as 52nd in such life expectancy to physician salaries that rank third highest in the world* and in some comparisons US physicians come out as the highest paid in the world** it’s remarkable that physician salaries have not been officially targeted as part of the problem with the healthcare system.
According to one source US physicians are ranked as third best-paid in the world. Only physicians in Australia where life expectancy is ranked 9th in the world and those in the Netherlands which is ranked as 21st in life expectancy has physicians earning more than those in the US.***
Research has directly connected higher physician fees to higher costs of healthcare in the U.S. as discussed in an article entitled, “More Evidence That Doctor Fees are a Big Reason Medicine Costs More in the U.S.”, published on March 7, 2012.****
Further the cost of medical liability insurance has dropped and has been falling for the past six years according to a PRWEB article of 10/10/11 based on research from the “2011 Medical Liability Monitor Annual Rate Survey.” *****
US physician salaries are up, life expectancy is at 52nd worldwide, malpractice insurance costs have gone down and physician salaries are one of the key drivers for increases in healthcare costs. What do we do with this information? Nothing.
Is there really nothing to do to legitimately control the prices being charged by our nation’s physicians or is it simply that we’ve misidentified the villains in healthcare?
Let’s face it. In healthcare we have our favorite villains. Insurance companies, we love hating them because after all they’re the ones who are directly billing us and are telling us that our expenses are not covered or covered in full.
Sick individuals. We’ve gone to town on this one believing that it’s sick people who need medical attention at high costs so that health insurers actually have to pay for the expense of treating illness (which health insurers really don’t like, they’d rather simply collect premiums and throw a few freebie checkups with finite costs at people instead. The question remains is that what health INSURANCE is supposed to be? Insurance is supposed to cover contingency, in the event you get sick, isn’t it?)
But what about the physicians? Certainly the mean-ing of being American is all about establishing blame and hating the blameworthy. Look at Wall Street. It’s been easy for us to hate Wall Street, especially executives earning more money when company performance is crummy. Yet physicians, with our life expectancy in 52nd place and their salaries in the top 3 worldwide and with rising incomes get a pass?
How have they escaped the “Greedy” label of Wall Street financial workers? How have they escaped the scrutiny of the President’s arguments for everyone paying their fair share? How have we failed to identify physicians as villains too?
This is not an article against physicians. They’ve done a great job avoiding the wrath of those angry about our healthcare system. But let’s face it, they’re as villainous as other participants in the scenario.
Their greed rivals that of Wall Street executives. Their lobbying rivals other groups’ expenditures (you can look up amounts paid by the AMA for lobbying). Their response to complaints about what they charge is largely in the form of ultimatum…We’ll stop practicing medicine, a strong-arm tactic used by blackmailers and others whom we have no problem labeling as corrupt.
Greedy through prices charged, manipulative through lobbying and callous through threats that they won’t practice medicine implying there will be no healthcare available, these are the activities of a villain.
So who cares who’s to blame? Blame is used to address solutions to a problem. Without addressing physician fees and salaries as part of the problem we will never address a key driver in the perpetuation of our healthcare crisis, rising costs.
By including physicians among the healthcare villains, obvious approaches to putting the reins on physician income come to mind among the most ordinary of citizens.
For instance, encourage rather than discourage group insurance. Every group from Federal, state and local civil servants to union members have the opportunity to receive more coverage for less money because insurance companies can negotiate with medical providers to charge less in return for more patients. As individuals the power to negotiate such rates dwindles.
A second change would be in the model of fee for service payments which creates billing for a service provided rather than who provides it. If you see a physician’s assistant who is paid less than a physician your bill should reflect that difference in provider. Physician practices that frequently use the services of less trained and less paid individuals NEVER pass on their savings to consumers because we’re billed for the service we receive regardless of whether we see a physician or some other healthcare worker.
If there’s enough blame to go around, we must no longer omit physicians from our list of healthcare villains because we can never catch up with prices that increase endlessly in part due to effective lobbying for favorable legislation from governments without looking at the full picture.
* http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-doctors-in-other-countries-make/http://www.practicelink.com/magazine/vital-stats/physician-compensation-worldwide/
*http://www.practicelink.com/magazine/vital-stats/physician-compensation-worldwide/
** http://www.worldsalaries.org/generalphysician.shtml
*** http://www.practicelink.com/magazine/vital-stats/physician-compensation-worldwide/
**** http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2012/03/07/more-evidence-that-doctor-fees-are-a-big-reason-medicine-costs-more-in-the-u-s/
***** http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/10/prweb8858326.htm
