Posted by
Defend America on Saturday, March 06, 2010 12:47:08 PM
March 6, 2010 12:00 A.M.
Getting Out of Medicine
We can burden doctors with red-tape hassles, but we can’t make doctors put up with them.
Some
years ago, one of my favorite doctors retired. On my last visit to his
office, he took some time to explain to me why he was retiring early
and in good health.
Being a doctor was becoming more of a hassle
as the years went by, he said, and also less fulfilling. It was
becoming more of a hassle because of the increasing paperwork, and it
was less fulfilling because of the way patients came to him.
He
was currently being asked to Xerox lots of records from his files, in
order to be reimbursed for another patient he was treating. He said it
just wasn’t worth it. Whoever was paying — it might have been an insurance company
or the government — would either pay him or not, he said, but he wasn’t going to jump through all those hoops.My doctor said
that doctor-patient relationships were not the same as they had been
when he entered the profession. Back then, people came to him because
someone had recommended him to them, but now increasing numbers of
people were sent to him because they had some group insurance plan that
included his group.
He said that the mutual confidence that was
part of the doctor-patient relationship was not the same with people
who came to his office only because his name was on some list of
eligible physicians.
The loss of one doctor — even a very good
doctor — may not seem very important in the grand scheme of heady
medical-care “reform” and glittering phrases about “universal health care.”
But making the medical profession more of a hassle for doctors risks
losing more doctors, while increasing the demand for treatment.
A study published in the November 2009 issue of The Journal of Law & Economics
showed that a rise in the cost of medical-liability insurance led to
more reductions of hours of medical service supplied by older doctors
than among younger doctors.
http://article.nationalreview.com/427145/getting-out-of-medicine/thomas-sowell