regarding health care costs: There are many jobs that don't provide enough income to afford a house

[RB TexLa]

people working these jobs rent apartments sometimes with roommates to lower the cost. Doctors can do this as well. We have to gut what is paid for medical services. A public option can do this, the private insurers will follow with lower payments. With no public option the buying power of medicare and medicaid can be used to do the same.

Remember we are told over and over that doctors do what they do because they love their patients, not for the money, so they will humbly accept this.

[tabbycat31]

1. problem is doctors have so much student loan debt

maybe if there are incentives to work in primary care that will forgive some debt it could work

[RB TexLa]

2. Allow them to modify their student debt. Spread it out over 40 or 50 years.

[Warpy]

9. Being in debt 50 years for a 30 year work life?

I don't think you'll get many takers.

Face it, our system is broken, top to bottom, because wages haven't kept pace with domestic inflation. The conservatives have played games for 40 years to tie our wages to the cost of goods produced overseas, not goods and services produced within our borders.

You got robbed. We all did.

The reason most students are graduating in debt and why doctors are graduating in crippling debt is because we've been robbed to fatten the rich.

It's not a healthcare crisis, a debt crisis, or any other kind of media driven crisis. It's a wage crisis, driven by greed at the top.

[undeterred]

6. Some do, others don't.

There are plenty of rich kids in medical school who never borrow a dime. And they never feel financial stress until they are finally financially independent, during residency.

[polpilot]

11. 'Problem is'..(1) Student debt 'problem is'..(2) malpractice ins. costs 'problem is' (3) insurance c

I wish my life was as 'complicated' as providing healthcare: #1 Increase # of physicians to 4X (O.K. so now we have the top 11% of 'the class', O.K. by me, fund medical schools to accomplish this) #2 Establish regional 'real' hospitals with 'emergency/trauma' in local towns and high speed transport to these 'centers (End Afghanista Occupation) paint military helecopters white and use them for American healthcare ROCK N ROLL!!!! Establish scan centers in local post offices; establish 'sore throat/cold' centers at scan centers with swab/labs.........long term persistent pain will be addressed by mobile marijuana units. Stay tuned for PHASE 2.

[w8liftinglady]

12. how about debt forgiveness in exchange for volunteering?

[Warren Stupidity]

3. On what factual basis have you concluded that doctors fees are the driving factor

in health care costs?

And, if you want to 'gut' something, why not start with gutting the health insurance industry, which industry extracts a 30% overhead for transferring funds from one account to another?

[RB TexLa]

4. Gut the payments to all providers.

[Warren Stupidity]

13. Huh? What health care does the insurance industry provide?

[RB TexLa]

15. Huh? I'm saying cut payments to health care providers. The only thing I have said

about private insurance is they will follow the lower government payments.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. And I am saying that is a ridiculous proposal when insurance is

extracting 30% off the top for doing nothing. You seem to be missing the forest for the trees here.

[Hannah Bell]

31. how about the payments to pharmaceutical & med technology corps?

[RB TexLa]

32. Yes, all of them

[jwirr]

5. We are already short on doctors and nurses. This would not help

that situation.

[RB TexLa]

7. Opening up visas would solve that

[amandabeech]

25. No. We need to do what it takes to get more people into medicine

and allied health professions.

We cannot continue to raid other countries' intellecutal capital when we have so many people here who could do the work.

We have to make medical field attractive.

Maybe be making investment banking and hedge funding less enticing.

[dysfunctional press]

8. specifically- what medical services do you feel are over-priced...?

:shrug:

[Warren Stupidity]

18. :crickets:

[sandnsea]

20. Every single one

Starting with $200 appointments for ten minutes of time.

[dysfunctional press]

26. yeah...that's REAL specific.

and if you're paying $200 for a simple office visit...then your dr. has a sucker for a patient.

i've been to four different dr.s over the past two years(one rheumetologist(sp?) and three md's)- two of them charged $60 for office visits, one of them $65, and the other $75.

[sandnsea]

29. That's how much it costs here

Oregon Health Plan. Very highly controlled. We've got one clinic because of the way the state health plan is set up. Other doctors aren't allowed to set up their own practice and compete. I don't think there's a doctor in this clinic that can be seen for less than $100 and that's only if you've had that doctor for a long time. When you get a new doctor, bam, up go your fees, which is what happened to me. My ENT specialist charges $150.00. My son needed $500 before the back specialist would even see him.

I don't know where you live, but you're damn lucky.

[dysfunctional press]

30. sounds like a state problem...

i'm in illinois, in the chicago nw sub-urban area.

if the oregon state health plan is so tightly controlled- it doesn't seem like the dr.s are to blame for the costs.

[RB TexLa]

22. We could cut what the government pays for all of them.

[dysfunctional press]

27. do you know how much the government currently pays for each service provided?

since you obviously must- why don't you enlighten us by giving a few S-P-E-C-I-F-I-C examples of how much the government pays for some medical services, and then tell us how much you feel they SHOULD be paying for them.

[Greyhound]

10. I assume you are also going to banish the insurance industry as it is, far and away,

the greatest single cause of hyper-inflation in the medical field. An OB-GYN pays about half a million a year in malpractice insurance premiums, similar rates for Neurologists, many types of surgeon, etc. And let's not forget the $200K - $500K in debt to the corporate welfare recipients they get to start their careers off with.

The only major problem we have in U.S. medicine is the insurance industry. Put them out of business and the rest of the system can heal.

[rfranklin]

14. In courtries with socialized medicine or national health care of some sort...

there is no malpractice insurance industry.

[Cleita]

16. Wrong solution. With national health care, fees to health care providers are

listed on the fee schedule, just like with Medicare. They don't get a penny more. The problem is the fee schedules haven't been updated in a long time here in the USA making such programs very low paying to health care providers. In Canada they do it more frequently. Doctors and province representatives meet and hammer out what is fair re-compensation for both sides. Actually insurance does pretty much the same thing. They only agree to a certain fee per procedure, so it isn't the doctors and health care providers that are at fault here. The problem is that a lot of our space age technology like MRIs are very expensive to administer. Big PhRMA has been gouging us in this country big time charging three to four times the amount they charge other countries for the same drug.

The big problem is Wall Street and the need for our insurer's to make profits. They also have high administrative costs considering the expensive advertising and politician lobbyists they have to buy off, not to mention the billionaire CEOs and all their trappings like private jets, yachts, mansions, etc., much of which is charged as business expense. We need to fix it from this end not the end of the health care providers, who are paying high mal-practice insurance, student loans and extra staff to process the insurance claims that they wouldn't need if it were single payer.

[Codeine]

19. The RB TexLa Show returns! nt

[Gold Metal Flake]

24. He doesn't drink with doctors.

[WillowTree]

21. So tell me.

Where's the incentive to the best/brightest to go to school for years and then wade through internship an residency so that they can spend their lives working in those jobs and professions that "don't provide enough income to afford a house"? Or are we supposed to be fine with having those who lack the personal drive and/or the intellectual capacity to pursue more lucritive endeavors to provide our medical care?

[RB TexLa]

23. They do it because they love their paitents not for the money.

You hear that all the time from doctors. They should have no objection to an 80% cut in what the government pays them.

[Quantess]

28. You want doctors to live in apartments with roommates?

Unrecommended your post.

[Vinca]

33. I think there needs to be a board that oversees medical costs,

just like utility boards oversee the price of electricity. I heard about one person who needed a single treatment that cost more than $50,000. Why would any nonsurgical procedure cost $50,000? What has happened to medical costs is a snowball. The insurance companies tell the providers what percentage they'll pay and the providers raise rates to retain their level of income. Next year the insurance companies tell them what percentage they'll cover, rates are raised again. And so it goes.