What’s Up? Is it the Doc? – Health Care Costs

If we’re spending trillions on medical care, then doctors must be all getting very rich. Well, not as rich as you probably think. Doctors do make good livings, but the national average is just that a good living; not an extraordinary living. Not like CEOs, who make millions in salary and multi-millions in bonuses. So in terms of salaries, doctors are paid on average around $200K per year. I can’t find this an excessive amount considering I do want to have these folks around to help keep me alive, patch me up when bad things happen, and to heal me should I get real sick. But even if there were 1 million physicians all sharing $1 trillion dollars they would all get $1 million a year. So doctors are not directly getting excessive amounts of our health care dollar. And while some doctors get much more, others get less; but regardless of how much some may bilk their patients; it is not the driver of the huge cost increases that we have to “reign in”.

Ok, so if it’s not their salaries; perhaps they are stashing it all away in some other manner. Now, I don’t know that they are; but let’s be pragmatic here, there are some doctors that are running businesses and groups and are likely establishing other operations that are sucking up more at the health care tit. And yes, this portion of the physicians are gaming the system and leveraging every rule, process and procedure that enables them to grab more than is necessary or beneficial to anyone (particularly the patients) except themselves.

But even this abuse is not ‘the factor’ that is behind the rapidly increasing cost of health care.
If we exempt the doctors’ from simply being overpaid, and cannot legitimately blame their excessive wages from being the root of all evils; we still should look at another factor that they are involved with which may be at the core of the costs explosion. The doctors are responsible for selecting and recommending the procedures that the patients need ‘in the best interests of their health’. Now here we probably have some meat to feast upon. Doctors’ apparently are ordering more procedures, tests, routines, … then they have in the past. So yes, they are contributing to rising costs; but if and only if, these activities are not truly in the best interests of patients’ health.

Most likely, all the additional work is not necessary, not in the patients’ interest or needs, and not done for any rational reason that we or most of the doctors would consider worth the expense or effort (or the additional risks that some are likely exposing some patients to).
So something is wrong with the system that the doctors’ are participating in. They may be willing or unwilling participants; but they do own some of the responsibility for the health care cost problem. It would seem therefore that in any ‘fix’ from Health Care Reform would incorporate some methods to encourage doctors to engage in responsible diagnostic and treatment procedures which serve the patients’ health care needs and not extraneous parties’ interests involved in the health care industry (including their own).

Unfortunately, we have several more parties to consider and I suspect we will find that they rightly (or would it be wrongly) share in the responsibility for the rising and unnecessary increase in health care costs.

Next in queue, hospitals; let’s bring them into the assessment. Please take the following forms, fill them out, and bring them back when you are done. And let me have your insurance information and card.