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Medicine Is a Profession, Not a Business
On Monday, while talking to the American Medical Association, President Obama was incredibly candid as he cut to the heart of what is wrong with our profit-driven health-care system:
"What accounts for the bulk of our costs is . . . that we spend vast amounts of money on things that aren't making our people any healthier; a system that automatically equates more expensive care with better care," he said.
"There are two reasons," he explained. "The first is a system of incentives where the more tests and services are provided, the more money we pay. And a lot of people in this room know what I'm talking about. It is a model that rewards the quantity of care rather than the quality of care; that pushes you, the doctor, to see more and more patients even if you can't spend much time with each; and gives you every incentive to order that extra MRI or EKG, even if it's not truly necessary.
It is a model that has taken the pursuit of medicine from a profession - a calling - to a business.
"That is not why you became doctors."
Obama is right: the U.S. has chosen to turn health care into a largely unregulated money-driven business--and this has damaged the doctor-patient relationship. Some hospitals and doctors see patients as profit centers. For their part, patients are no longer sure that their physicians will put the patients' interests ahead of ahead of their own interests. And doctors are no longer entirely certain that their patients are not looking for a chance to sue them.
Obama called for a renaissance of trust between doctor and patient, telling doctors that he knows they want to return to the values that sent them to medical school in the first place.
By
Maggie Mahar
|
June 16, 2009; 12:38 AM ET
| Category:
Health Care Reform
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Posted by: Maggie Mahar | June 16, 2009 4:48 PM
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Yes the current money-driven system has hurt the doctor-patient relationship, at least in my household. We are insured, with low deductibles, so we are lucky in that respect. However, we do not have a primary care doctor, and none are available within 12 miles or more of our house. And, surprise, we live in an affluent suburban San Francisco area.
The problem is that our former doctor won't see us anymore, except on several weeks notice, because we did not elect "concierge care", an up-front fee based payment, insurance payments not accepted. The charge would be $7200 a year, and we would still need insurance for all other types of medical care, lab tests, etc. So we called all the doctors we could find, and none are taking new patients, except for the ones who only see concierge care new patients. So in other words, unless we fork over $7,200 a year for my family, no primary care physician in our area will see us.
What has happened to the medical "profession"? How is this different from extortion?
Keep in mind, we are among the lucky ones, not being one of the 47 million un-insured.
Posted by: artbarton | June 16, 2009 4:31 PM
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Art Barton--
Thanks for your comment. "Concierge medicine" is the ultimate in "tiered healthcare" which rations care by income.
If we begin to rein in health care spending, eliminating the money-driven unncessary treatments, we are going to wind up with a sharply tiered system in which only the very wealthy are overtreated--while the rest of us are undertreated.
If, in the end, if a tiny percent of the population chooses to spend its own money to be cut and irradiated unncessarilly, this is, of course, their choice--as long as high quality, affordable sustainable care is available to the other 98% of the population.