11 Sep Real Talk | Physician Reimbursement
Dr. Murphy discusses the cost of medical care and the money to be made in the medical profession.
What’s interesting is how the greed has put brakes on different sectors of the health care. Okay, perfect example is physicians. If you are a Medicare provider, you can only charge so much. And every year the federal government takes away a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more. And this is a real world example of what they’ve done. Well Women Exam on Medicare pays roughly $32. They bill $250, but Medicare only reimburses them $32. Well that’s going to go down another 4% this year, so next year it’s only going to pay $30. While everything is going up, you know, 8, 9, 10, 15%, the federal government is going to cut back 4%. So these people are going to take a 4% cut in pay. Now Well Women Exam takes about 30 minutes to do. And let’s see, now we’re going to get paid $30 for doing it. So at $60 an hour, and out of that $60 an hour I have to pay rent, overhead, utilities, licenses, insurance. Oh I got some front office help, I’m sure they’ll want to get paid. Not a lot of money left over. We’re talking about paying professionals no more than $20,000, $30,000 a year. Well I’m sure to the people that make $20,000 or $30,000, I’m sure that seems reasonable. But my God, I think Shriber Cheese is hiring people at $20 an hour right now. So you’re better off to give up your medical degree and go get a job at Shriber. You’ll make more money, you’ll have a better life and a better living doing that. I mean it’s really going down the tubes quite fast right now. And I think when we talked about the future of healthcare, I think literally in about 10 years there will be no doctors going to see Medicare and Medicaid people because they cannot afford it. It’s not that we have a problem with them, we do not. We just don’t get reimbursed. The federal government is not going to pay us and we can’t keep up with the overhead. Every year physicians have been making less and less and less when they go down this road of getting in bed with the government. So I suppose the one thing we could do as physicians, as former union, go on strike. Well, what’s a strike? We’re not going to see anybody until you start raising our rates. Well, guess what? That’s against the law. That’s called price fixing racketeering. I’m sure they’ll throw in wire fraud and some probably January 6th thing in there. I’m sure we’re doing all that being a conspirators and everything. So no, we cannot form a union. That’s against the law. Well, teachers can form a union, but we’re considered a public trust. In other words, people need physicians. Okay, so they have to have us without doctors. Well, they can’t get medicines and people die. So that’s a public trust. Not unlike your utility companies, your electrical companies considered a public trust. When they want to raise rates, they have to go through boards and stuff like that. Go through a few lobbyists, grease a few palms. Physicians, forget it. We’re all independent. We’re too independent to ever to form a union anyway. I mean, our profession has physicians as a whole, I think is doomed. And I think you’re going to get less and less quality physicians. Medicare applications seem to be dropping off. We’re just not getting the good candidates in those medical schools that we once did. So I think the future of healthcare in this country is going down the tubes pretty quick too. So that’s why I can’t retire. I got to keep doing this to keep plugging away because I see the handwriting on the wall. It’s not good.
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