Doctors going broke

From CNN courtesy of the Huffington Post:

Doctors in America are harboring an embarrassing secret: Many of them are going broke.

This quiet reality, which is spreading nationwide, is claiming a wide range of casualties, including family physicians, cardiologists and oncologists.

Industry watchers say the trend is worrisome. Half of all doctors in the nation operate a private practice. So if a cash crunch forces the death of an independent practice, it robs a community of a vital health care resource.

"A lot of independent practices are starting to see serious financial issues," said Marc Lion, CEO of Lion & Company CPAs, LLC, which advises independent doctor practices about their finances.

Doctors list shrinking insurance reimbursements, changing regulations, rising business and drug costs among the factors preventing them from keeping their practices afloat. But some experts counter that doctors' lack of business acumen is also to blame.

More here.

While distressing, this news simply underscores an obvious fact that the ruling establishment absolutely refuses to accept: in the modern era, there is simply no free market model that allows the field of medicine to function in an effective way. For over two decades now, it's been patients who have suffered the brunt of free market medicine, from people who can't afford health insurance to people who have it but with providers refusing to pay for necessary treatments for bogus reasons. It has been and continues to be a total mess. It now appears that doctors are beginning to feel capitalism's ill effects, too.

Maybe we'll finally see some real reform, if only because doctors are getting to the point that they have nothing to lose.

The bottom line here is that it is the height of foolishness to consider medicine as a business. Indeed, medicine isn't an economic transaction: it's a vital public service, like roads, or courts, or police, or fire fighters. Sure, you can figure out how much money you're spending on it, but that doesn't make it a business. Clearly, the economic incentives alone rule out consideration of medicine as business from the get-go.

We have to totally revamp the entire industry, coordinate it, throw the middle men out, figure out how to get the best bang for our buck, and utterly remove the notion of patient payment altogether because it fucks over huge segments of the population, and it is apparently no longer enough to keep doctors in business. And this isn't rocket science. Economists already have several successful models that they can adapt for usage here.

All we need is for the ruling class to get on board. I'm not holding my breath.

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