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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
[quote]I’m a doctor. I’m sorry that you had this experience. I had a terrible experience with end of life care for one of my parents, too, which was further complicated by the pandemic. It is extremely stressful.

There might be, however, confusion about physician billing in the hospital. I am at a university hospital and am paid a salary. I do not get paid for seeing an individual patient. I also do not know what insurance the patient has nor have I ever checked. So, I’m not sure why the doctors were in seeing your relative, but at least at a big teaching hospital we aren’t paid for individual patient visits. I am just required to take care of the patients who are there during the time-frame that I am on service, and it doesn’t impact my salary.

I know that some doctors are jerks, but it’s been rough for us since the pandemic. It was stressful going in during the spring of 2020, and I was terrified that I would bring COVID home and kill my family.  We never got to WFH, which was really hard when the kids were home from school for months. A lot of my co-workers, nurses, etc have quit or retired since the pandemic, and we are now chronically short staffed. Our bonuses were cut and our salaries frozen even though we were working more under crazy conditions. And I make about 200K/year (though I’m in the Baltimore area), which is embarrassingly low according to most posters on this board.

A lot of us think that the “medical industrial complex” is in the process of imploding. My hospital-based colleagues think we need a single-payer system - the current insurance company mess is untenable. But the doctors have continued to show up in person through the pandemic (unlike those who get to WFH), and the last 2.5 years have been a pretty bad trip.  Which is not to say that we are altruistic - maybe just stupid or stubborn or scared of change? Honestly, I feel really stupid for not jumping to biotech/pharma like a lot of my former colleagues. But then I wonder who will take care of people if we all get fed up leave. And what was the point of all that training? I’m good at my job - I should use my skills. It’s just been a bad 2.5 years for doctors, nurses, laboratory workers, and other staff. We are all burned out.[/quote]

Thank you for writing this.  Your careful and considered response to an attack on your profession from someone who clearly does not know better is the perfect response.  Many people do not understand that, at least at teaching hospitals, insurance rarely enters the discussion, and only does when the insurance company refuses to approve a needed test without a "peer to peer" conference with a foreign doctor who has never practiced in the United States. Her pay is the same either way whether she sees 1 patient or 100 patients or orders 1 test or 100 tests.  There is no bonus for doing more tests or seeing more patients in those hospitals.  Your response also captures the very real fear that my wife felt after going into the hospital every day during the height of the pandemic.  While many people worked from home and while day cares shut down, doctors, nurses, patient care techs (along with police/firefighters/EMS etc) went into work every day, without the benefit of a vaccine, and oftentimes without the proper PPE.  It was truly a scary time that many people either do not understand or have quickly forgotten. [/quote]
While this doctor may receive a salary that isn’t tied into how she cares for her patients many other doctors are in private practice and get bonuses for HMO gate keeping or are specialists who’s income is not a true salary. [/quote]

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