How Doctors Get Paid

Kudos to The Happy Hospitalist.This blog post is one of the best posts I have ever read (on any subject). Make sure you read the whole thing.

The back bone of our nation's health care system is in shambles. Primary care, or better named, comprehensive care, is being hunted to extinction by the very system that needs it most. The Medicare National Bank and all its failed policies has destroyed the great value that comprehensive care brings to the table. The world is full of bumbling uneducated morons who make comments like, "screw the rich doctors", or "they're only in it for the money". I am here to present to you the economics of the current situation, so you can understand that the backbone is being destroyed.
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Several statistics are worth noting.

* In a practice expected to be fully supported by Medicare, which for all the single payer, government run fanatics out there is the equivalent scenario, you see that under the current government mandated payment system a comprehensive care physician making $150,000 a year in 1997 would be making $154, 279 a year, with out increasing the volume of services being performed. In other words, without increasing volume, a physician would be making no more now than they did 10 years ago. When you factor in the cost of living increases by the consumer price index (CPI), that physician would have to make $196,382 a year in 2007, just to maintain their lifestyle of 1997. It is no wonder why volume rules in a system that uses top line cost control measures. For comprehensive care physicians, that means double and triple booking clinics and hiring less qualified extenders. For specialists that means hiring extenders for all their low paying cognitive encounters and spending more time in the procedure lab making the much higher relative profit. And adding exponential cost to Medicare without an increase in quality.
* If the 2008 July 1st cuts are allowed to stand, a comprehensive care physician would earn 23% less now than they did in 1997, on an absolute basis. Adjusted for inflation, that is a 59% paycut from 1997.
* The current SGR mandated by Congress is set to make comprehensive care physician income on par with the average take home pay for all Americans in 4 short years. That means a college educated nurse will be making more than the average comprehensive care physician. The unionized laboror with a high school education will be making more than your comprehensive care physician.
* Based on current SGR economics mandated by your Congress, in five short years, your comprehensive care physician will be collecting welfare, earning the approximate equivalent of minimum wage.

This is not an alarm, this is a category 5 hurricane that has already swept through our health care system. Medical students with their $200,000 in debt are speaking with their wallets. According to the uneducated masses with the mentality that doctors make too much money, I should be collecting food stamps. In five short years, your government mandated health care system is set up to do just that.