AZ and OK Voters Opt Out of Individual Mandate, and Other Links
Voters in Arizona and Oklahoma opt out of the individual mandate in the federal health reform law. Colorado voters stay in.
Primary care doctors worked an average of 53.1 hours per week and earned an average annual income of $187,857 in 2004/05. Income was 48% higher for surgeons, 36% higher for internal medicine and pediatric subspecialties, and 45% higher for clinicians in other specialties.
Why do Medicare patients living in nursing homes go to the hospital so often? Because doctors (and just about everybody else) get paid more when that happens. (HT to Jason Shafrin)
Follow up: 24 percent of all hospitalizations for long‐term care facility residents in 2006 were potentially preventable. (HP to Jason Shafrin)
Glad to see that voters in Arizona and Oklahoma have good sense.
What’s wrong with Coloradans? Must be the high altitude affecting the brain.
Hospitals game the system. Nursing homes game the system. Doctors game the system. I’m sure if you asked them why, they would tell you it’s the only way they can survive.
While it is attractive to assert that nursing home patients go to the hospital a lot solely to improve revenues, liability fears may play a significant role. The California HealthCare Foundation has an Issue Brief giving the parameters of the problem.
Okay. You’ve convinced me. I don’t want to go into primary care.
Once you spend four years in medical school and face a three year residency, it only makes sense to look for a longer residency that boosts pay by 50%.
I am pretty certain that the reason primary-care doctors are “underpaid” is that it is virtually impossible for a third-party payer to figure out how much 15 minutes of primary care is “worth.”
Third-party payment is always bad for medical care. However, at least for other specialties the list of “tasks” is somewhat better defined than for primary care.
Primary-care doctors should be lobbying the most for health reform that puts health-care dollars back in the pockets of the patients.