Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Here is what is wrong with USA health care...

I am not saying docs shouldn't make a good wage. I just feel if a patient has insurance, they exploit it. My last surgery was very basic, a simple scope, and one small pin. I was told before the sugery the code for this indicated around $2k in charges, not $12,650.00.

I'd do some serious negotiation with that doc. Then again, if your insurance company doesn't care about wasting money your might be screwed.

And...this was the second surgery. I went in Nov. 18th for my first surgery. They took out broken pieces, installed a plate and 4 screws. They also took bone from my hip and put it under the plate to fuse it together.

Then after 12 weeks in a cast, the left corner of my wrist hurt, and it didn't hurt in that spot before the first surgery. Hurt too bad to hold the forearm of a gun. So, I went back to the Dr. and he was stumped. So he went back in "for a simple scope" a surgery that he told me was very simple and minor, and was not near the scope of the first. This second surgery cost as much as the first! I feel like since they screwed it up, it should have been free since it was their screw up. Not only was that not the case, it was just as expensive as the first.

I have an appointment Monday, I will be sure to bring up the $12k for a scope and see what he says.

I also found out from the insurance, that all my follow up visits that I paid a $30 copay for, were supposed to have been free since they were included in the first surgery. Not sure if it is worth the headache to get all my copays back somehow.

I guess we can all se where your going with this. What a suprise. Sounds like your surgery was just a wee bit more complex that what you let on to in your first post.

NO, my second surgery was not complex. It was a simple scope. The first one is already paid off and old news. It was done in November. The second one was a scope to find a small bone chip THEY missed the first time. It should not have cost the same as the first one which was complex.

In my former job, I prepared tax returns for a number of Dr's and dentists.

Lowest income I saw: $150,000 1st or second year out of residency
Highest W-2 I saw: $4,000,000
Average: $800,000
Most common: $500,000

Maybe this was just for Alaska and maybe we just had high end clientele, but if you want my opinion on why medical costs and insurance rates are so high around here, look no further than the above. (Just scraping by? I think not.)

The average for family practice docs, not surgeons, OB-Gyn or any specialty in OR and WA is $135K. My last doc when she retired was making $88K. I know another than made about that too. Both of those women have spent their careers working with low cost clinics and indigent patients for personal reasons.

I'd allow that there are Dr.'s out there who make a career decision to take less money. I understand that the VA and native hospitals pay less, although I have never seen hard numbers.

I never saw a dentist that made under $500k and only one Dr. under $400k. I never inquired as to specialty's, although the ones that I knew were specialists did make considerably more, not to exclude over $1 million/year.

That's why my daugher is leaning towards a specialty when she gets that far along.

Dentists rake in the bucks. I think their overhead is a lot lower. I know an orthodontist that isn't doing too badly either.

I really should have gone to school....

I call BS on doctor and dentists wages. I KNOW what the American Dental Association average income for dentists is and it is WAY below 500,000 for an average dentist. It made the news that the average Dentist now makes more than the average MD- I think you threw out a WAG to see if it would be believed.(The average dentist only PRODUCED about 500,000- da## sure didn't make that much-2003 #'s)

Call BS eh? Well, I can't "prove" anything of course.

Keep in mind that we are talking about Alaska only. I worked in the midwest for a year before moving here and, you are correct as far as that goes - salaries were lower there (but I only saw 3 dentists/doctors in that time).

I suspect that most Alaskans who have worked both in the midwest and here would agree that health insurance is far more expensive here. Mine was on the order of double and worse coverage at that.

My dental bills (I have never had dental insurance) are 3 times as high.

As to the relative proportion of earnings between dentists and Dr.'s, the Dr's generally made more. The only Dr's less than dentists were generally the newer ones. My experience is anecdotal and probably not statistically valid. But I paid attention since my health and dental bill was nauseating.

Believe me or don't. And you really have no basis to believe me, this being an internet board after all.

To avoid a flaming escalation (which is where this appears to be headed), I shall remain silent on the subject from here on out, having said my piece.

Carry on.

I agree with sodbuster. Doctors that make the really big bucks are the exception, and it is generally because they are either celebrity doctors of a sort or because they have made substantial investments in a clinic and equipment etc. so their income is a function of their labor in addition to a return on their invested capital.

With few exceptions a doctor or dentist making $200,000 is likely earning every dime he takes home. Those people work hard hours, and are on call all the time. And they are expected to be perfect or get their butts sued off. Damn few are lucky to get through a career with the same spouse and kids that didn't end up in jail or rehab.

You see lots of plump attorneys and engineers, but damn few fat dentists.

For the most part, the healthcare problem lies elsewhere . . .in the tax code, the legal system, and government/socialist robbery schemes.

Socialized medicine in other countries, at least in my understanding, is publicly funded. It is a single pay system, which is not a good idea (like Medicare). There is no competition, the only game in town.

I did not suggest that government monies be used. Having all citizens insured means that all pay premiums into the system. Having a large base distributes the risk for all, even those that have serious issues and will lower premiums. Large employers get huge discounts on insurance costs because of the large pool of employees that distribute the risk.

"Large employers get huge discounts on insurance costs because of the large pool of employees that distribute the risk."
........
If everyone is compelled to participate, what incentive is there to compete for customers?
That would have to be either a government socialist scheme or a facist arrangement, would it not?

In France if I remember right the docs work as contractors. They treat the patient and submit the bill to the government for payment. Some of them do house calls. Overall the people are happy with the care they get and their system costs less (per capita) to cover everyone than ours does to leave 40 million uncovered.

Not every place is like Canada. Many have a better standard of care.


No place is as expensive as the US. The next closest to us in costs is Switzerland and they're at about half of ours.

I don't know if that's the way to go but what we're doing is broken and badly.

Just a thought on US doctors, but I beleive that statistics say most doctors will die in their 50's are more likely to acquire drug and alcohol addictions and have higher divorce rates. I always tell my doctor that they're are more old smokers than old doctors.

A lot of docs don't take their own advice, they're too busy.

The stress takes a toll too.

I was wondering if anyone else noticed the new resident BS artist as well. No way are salaries that high high. The national average is what has already been posted for family practice/internal medecine. Someone was on drugs when they filled out those tax forms and probably drinking when they decided to post that nonsense here with one of their first posts. Add another one to the Ignore list. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />
Net income might be that high before staff salaries , overhead, insurance, rent, etc etc. But no way is an average dentist even making 1/2 of that. Dream on.

I would propose that the motive would be profit. They are not required to be in the health insurance business, I hardly think they are there for moral reasons. Any insurance company would like to have more customers, that is their goal. It reduces their risk.

I have no idea what the "average" dentist makes but the one my ex worked for produced around $88,000 to $90,000 per month. That's a gross income of around $1,000,000 per year. I know this because I had to listen to her B&M about it after their monthly staff meetings where he B&M'd about the need to raise production.

True, that was not take home pay, but he lived in a $750,000 house, drove a $50,000 Ford F350 loaded with every bell and whistle possible, owned a cabin in Mccall, ID and had half interest in an airplane. Would take his wife and two kids on skiing vacations to Aspen two or three times per year as well. So apparently he was taking home enough to make the payments on all of that. Not too shabby for a guy around 35 years old living in a small town in eastern Oregon.

Oh, except he "couldn't afford" to provide health insurance or other benefits for his staff, or to pay them more than $12 per hour. Guess that was how he could afford all the toys.

Most medical practitioners used to be in the "practice" of medicine. Now far too many are in the business of medicine, plain and simple.

There are a lot of reasons why health care costs so much and the physicians are not solely to blame, indeed they probably only account for a small part of the overall cost. But unless they specifically want to work for low wages, they are not poor.