A single-payer system restricted to primary care physicians might be best. If the government were to pay all the salaries of the roughly 150,000 primary care physicians in this country, that comes out to about $15 billion (assuming a generous $100,000 untaxed salary). Factor in staff and building usage, and you’re looking at maybe $30 billion.

It would be a start. But how about creating a lower-tier cost of doing business system for primary care doctors. Yes, creating clinics in which drs share equipment, staff, cost of supplies etc would help. They should also have lower rent on the building, lower property insurance, have a means of providing free health care to nurses and staff and thereby pay less salaries.
(So many nurses cannot afford health care, it is ridiculous) So the cost of doing business should be reduced to the minimum. The money for health care (or what we used to call medicine) should all go to actual care and immediate support activities, and to those who actually deliver patient care.

Go for the inheritance. I do begin to get the idea, however, that underneath all the concerned chat you (pl.)think you’re doing everyone a favor by choosing medicine as a vocation. Don’t. Be a golf coach, in the end you’ll be happier and will meet beautiful rich women, some of them with their own breasts.

The world will not collapse without you in your scrubs. Ok, it’s already collapsing, but what’s the big deal? Bunch of greedy bastards anyway.

Just do the whole John Gault thing and withdraw your unhumble excellence because we (the non-doctors, the unwashed, unscientific) are not worthy of it anyway. C’mon, call the world’s bluff – just pull out now and let the chips fall where they may.

You don’t want all the liability and debt and we’re tired of little weasels whining about the cost of medical school so let’s end it all now. Ok?

As another aside, could hospitals or doctor’s offices get any uglier colors schemes? Is it important to someone somewhere for a trip to the emergency room to be like visiting a military consignment center? It’s one thing to be a good scientist but is it really necessary to dress like Sarah Palin’s gynecologist?

As a related aside, what is the point of keeping interns and other doctor lackeys up all night several nights in a row? this pathetic and dangerous form of hazing epidomizes the leadership of the medical profession: juveniles. I believe at Yale they used to make skull and bones candidates mud wrestle, and fling excrement at each other for entry into the titans of industry circuit, isn’t it time you guys grew up?

Doctors are not heroes or divine beings or in any other way an elite, except by their own invention. They are people, members of a community in some cases, and are duly respected as such. (Give me a choice between a plumber with 5 years of experience and a plumber with 35 years of experience – not a contest.) With that said, many doctors, however, are just assholes like in any other profession. I had an anaesthesiologist student of mine take me out to dinner a year ago, and, after Thai food, he read me the bible. Apparently, I did not respond to his gobbley-gook as intended and he and his wife stared at me blankly, waiting for something to happen. Picture me doing that to you now.

Why is Adam’s debt less just or more pressing than Bob’s? (Well, for one thing, the bank assumes Adam will eventually be able to pay it back, while the same bank assumes Bob is an out of work loser who can’t raise his hands over his head.) At what level are Bob and Adam connected? Because Adam has some of the skills necessary to track down Bob’s tick bite should Adam get to pay off his $200,000 first? Ever? The key to the solution is the missing “community,” and that is missing because it dissolved into malls. Mall Medicine: it has a solidly Middle-Ages feel to it, doesn’t it?

Not to beat a medieval horse to death with a mall, but “the market” seems to have developed some leaks lately and the model for a market based medical care is teetering on the edge of collapse like every other industy which sucked up deregulation like Clarence Thomas pulling a pubic hair through a straw.

The problem is that currently, the ABA is free market. Health insurance companies operate in a free market. But physicians don’t. Read into it what you will.

“Adam, do you actually believe that freeing doctors from the threat of suit will lower health care charges? Do they not teach you lads about human nature? It won’t work, Adam, people are greedy. Freed from supervision a few doctors will see “opportunity”; then a few more, and finally a flood.”

The only thing missing from the equation if you eliminate frivolous lawsuits is the cost of malpractice insurance. Medicare and Medicaid will see reduction in costs and will thus reduce reimbursement (which they are in control of, not physicians; and the government isn’t one to miss out on the opportunity to cut pay to physicians), health care insurance providers will follow suit, and thus the price for the uninsured will drop as well because you can’t charge a patient more than you charge the government or an insurance company. In the end, your health care premiums and taxes go down, and if they don’t it’s the government or your insurance company that’s at fault for not returning their cost savings to you.