So, there are considerable problems with the American medical system, yes? A system that your own experience should tell you is fraught with forms, approvals, liabilities, regulations, insurance rulings, lawsuits, bureaucracy, and the occasional awesome jackass doctor with a cane. Yet the popular solution at the moment is to turn it into the pill-popping version of the DMV?
An interesting letter from an independent doctor suggests the opposite:
Every day I see patients who have been chewed up and spit out by the system. They are treated poorly by many of their doctors and their staff. They must wait, plead, sacrifice, leave messages, wait some more and when they finally get to see the doctor, they get 2 minutes, 3 prescriptions, labwork and a followup appointment before they ever know what ails them.
The current system is dysfunctional primarily because the healthy free market forces have been removed. Bureaucracy reigns, the consumer loses. Doctors lose, too, because almost all of us are miserable and feel out of control.
My practice is relatively new: 2 years. It is successful and has a good reputation. I have a real fear that it's not long before my type of practice will be shut down.
Me too.
