Anonymous wrote:Under the current system only a small percentage of physicians are truly altruistic.

If we broke the for profit model of medicine in USA in favor of a system like most developed countries with national healthcare, physicians would have heavily subsidized education and a comfortable salary but not a ticket to private plane and yacht and luxury car and mansion ownership, and the profession would draw more people of good character and fewer charlatans fraudsters and greedy careless jerks with horrible bedside manner.

And no, there doesn’t have to be a wealth incentive to have cutting edge science happening in the medical profession. One of the very best hospitals in the world where people go when nobody else can help them is the Mayo Clinic, a hospital with a team approach whose physicians - all of them, including elite specialists - take home a salary not a pile of cash generated by a billing machine governed by optimal profits.

Anonymous wrote:Under the current system only a small percentage of physicians are truly altruistic.

If we broke the for profit model of medicine in USA in favor of a system like most developed countries with national healthcare, physicians would have heavily subsidized education and a comfortable salary but not a ticket to private plane and yacht and luxury car and mansion ownership, and the profession would draw more people of good character and fewer charlatans fraudsters and greedy careless jerks with horrible bedside manner.

And no, there doesn’t have to be a wealth incentive to have cutting edge science happening in the medical profession. One of the very best hospitals in the world where people go when nobody else can help them is the Mayo Clinic, a hospital with a team approach whose physicians - all of them, including elite specialists - take home a salary not a pile of cash generated by a billing machine governed by optimal profits.

Anonymous wrote:Under the current system only a small percentage of physicians are truly altruistic.

If we broke the for profit model of medicine in USA in favor of a system like most developed countries with national healthcare, physicians would have heavily subsidized education and a comfortable salary but not a ticket to private plane and yacht and luxury car and mansion ownership, and the profession would draw more people of good character and fewer charlatans fraudsters and greedy careless jerks with horrible bedside manner.

And no, there doesn’t have to be a wealth incentive to have cutting edge science happening in the medical profession. One of the very best hospitals in the world where people go when nobody else can help them is the Mayo Clinic, a hospital with a team approach whose physicians - all of them, including elite specialists - take home a salary not a pile of cash generated by a billing machine governed by optimal profits.

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Anonymous wrote:The doctor hating on here is so ridiculous. No one is forcing you to see a doctor or have a doctor. When you have an emergency then just treat yourself since they all suck so much. Again just like any profession most people do the work because they like helping people but they also want to be paid fairly for the training they had to endure and to pay off their +200000 loans and to also support their families. Surgeons spend 7+ years in residency crafting their art. At the end of the day, who cares if they are doing it for altruistic reasons? If they can do the surgery you need then that’s all that matters. I don’t see people asking for plumbers to have altruistic reasons to unclog toilets.

Basically, if you don’t like doctors then don’t see them. No one is forcing you.

I would love to skip the doctors appt for routine prescription refills. Such a waste of money and time.

I guess it’s possible that some doctors are needlessly bringing people in but often the standard of care requires reassessment. They have an ethical and professional responsibility to provide appropriate follow up (not to mention they are risk of being sued should they “just send in a refill” inappropriately.)

People call my doctor husband after two years of not coming into the office demanding a refill. Of course, he has to ask that they visit first. He has a responsibility to prescribe meds responsibly and ethically as the above poster stated. Happens all the time.
He does not charge co-pays to those who cannot afford the co-pay. Very altrustic. And no, he isn't making the salary of most of these law firm partners running around here and works harder.

In the US, this is a felony, unless he is NOT charging insurance for the insurance part of payment. You cannot legally charge the insurance and not charge the copay if the copay is a part of the contractual agreement between the insurer and the patient -- this violates the Federal False Claims Act.

This seems not to be the case:

https://www.whistleblowerllc.com/copay-waiver/

BTW do you practice in this area of law? If so then this concerns me. It took me about 35 seconds on google to figure out your claim was not true. I wish people would think before calling someone else a felon. But. this is the internet after all.

No ... but I can apparently read the article you linked better than you can. (?) That concerns me, actually.

From *your link*:

As a result, routine copay waiver is illegal and results in criminal and civil penalties. Routine co-payment waiver also violates the False Claims Act, and the government and whistleblowers can recover millions of dollars for this practice.
...
It is not illegal to write off a patient’s copay balance if the provider makes a good-faith attempt to collect. However, when a provider has a policy of not attempting to collect copays that becomes illegal.

Did you miss that the poster states that her husband makes a practice of routinely writing off co-pays?

I did not read the post to say that her husband routinely wrote off copays for everyone. In fact, the text that YOU highlighted states that the doctor does not charge copays to those who cannot afford them. So yes, under your scenario that you created, he may be violating the law. Under the scenario that the poster actually described (using the text that YOU highlighted), it would most likely not violate the law.

Here's another link that makes that pretty clear.

https://www.hollandhart.com/pdf/Waiving-Copays-and-Deductibles.pdf

I'm gonna assume that the doctor knows most of the laws that regulate the practice, or at least has an office manager who knows these laws, and I'll assume he's operating within the law.

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Anonymous wrote:Doctors order unnecessary tests. I know someone who went to see a dr regarding pain in his leg, dr sent him to the ER because of a suspected blood clot, which proved to be false

All that hassle, expense and wait all for nothing
Might as well not have gone to a dr, since the pain is still there

Your example is terrible. Do you really expect 100% of tests to be positive?
At least have valid complaints.

The same guy would be first in line filing a lawsuit if the doctor failed to send the patient to the ER and subsequently died due to an undiscovered blood clot.