Thanks for your blog. Did you see our “Pig People from Outer Space (PPOs)” animation targeting health insurer greed?

Take a look:

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/healthcare/PigPeople/

Thoughts?

Jerry Flanagan
Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights

I still believe most physicians are still imbued with the ideals that prompted them to go into medicine. There is no doubt, however, entrepreneurship is now rampant in medical practice, particularly when physicians coming out of their training get confronted with debts of as much as $150,000. One way to erase that debt quickly is to go into a more lucrative specialty; another trick is to go into primary care and see as many patients as possible daily. Getting hooked with HMOs may just complicate the problem.

Before I retired, I just could not believe reports of some physicians seeing as many as 40 to 60 patients within a 6 to 8-hour working day. Those reports reminded me of an old English physician-friend, an immigrant here, who routinely saw close to 100 patients in a single day while in Great Britain. At least that’s what he told me. I could not think of any scenario closer to the brink of disaster than this production-type medicine.

Having said that, I live in a community where the main hospital runs one of the best FP programs in the Southeast. Over one half of its alumni have stayed and have become some of the most respected pnysicians in our area. Which is one reason I think those few physicians who stray from the straight, narrow path are more the exception rather than the rule, contrary to what Retired Doc had observed.

Medicine is rewarding in many more ways than we can imagine. Money is just one of them, but it ought not to
overwhelm our better nature as members of a profession whose primary devotion continues to be the caring, compassionate care of our patients.