Given the current legislative efforts to reform health care, it’s not surprising that there are plenty of articles being written on the subject. But I was surprised that in just one day last weekend I managed to read three articles that blamed doctors for a decent chunk of our out of control health care costs. More interesting, not one of these articles was talking about defensive medicine or a focus on high tech care; no, they were all basically saying that too many doctors are greedy for money.
First there was this article in the NY Times, which discussed how the AMA has since 1929 (yes, 80 years ago) fought against systems (such as cooperatives) that would potentially limit doctor incomes by creating a salary structure rather than a fee for service structure. Although some cooperatives were formed, it was over the objections of the AMA. Not coincidentally, the two medical groups that are continually held up as paragons of cost-effective and world-class care, the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic, are both cooperatives. At a recent conference on cost-effective care, most doctors and hospital executives agreed that the fee for service system is “archaic and fundamentally at odds” with good practice.
Next was this article by Dr. Atul Gawande in The New Yorker, in which he investigates why health care in McAllen, Texas is so much higher than the national average. In fact, he notes, McAllen’s health expenses are twice as high as El Paso, Texas, which has the exact same demographics. Gawande explores a number of reasons – service quality, technology, legal environment – but ultimately concludes that it comes down to massive overuse of medical care. Doctors in McAllen do far more tests and scans and procedures than average.
But Gawande goes even further. He blames this overuse not on a surfeit of caution, or desire to better treat patients, but on doctor greed. Doctors make more money when they do more procedures, and if they have ownership stake or revenue sharing agreements with imaging centers or labs or hospitals (and many of them do), then they have financial incentive to send patients to those facilities. Interviewing doctors in McAllen, Gawande uncovers a culture of greed, where doctors are in it for the money. Or, as a McAllen cardiac surgeon says, “Medicine has become a pig trough here.”
I sent Gawande’s article to a friend of mine, who is a doctor in a family practice, but who also has a Master’s in Public Health and did a fellowship in preventative medicine. My friend agreed with Gawande’s conclusions, noting that “nobody wants to give up that $500k+ salary, and the AMA is a huge lobby.”
Finally, The New Republic had a piece that sort of summed it all up, noting:
“Given how much of the game of reining in costs hinges on doctors–whether they see themselves as profit-maximizing small businessmen (or, for that matter, large businessmen), or as fundamentally involved in healing patients and receiving fair compensation for that service–I think we have to think about the kinds of people who go into the profession.”
And this is where I get to have my say. Because if someone is going into medicine because they want to make a million dollars, I say they should go to Wall Street instead. As this chart shows, it isn’t exactly like doctors are hurting for money. Practicing medicine isn’t a license to print money, and when a doctor orders an extra $1,000 procedure, while he gets to keep that $1,000, we all have to pay for it through higher insurance premiums. At which point he is no better than the greedy mortgage-backed security trader whose huge bonus ended up being subsidized by taxpayers.
This just in: right before posting, I read this article in the Wall Street Journal about how the AMA and the American College of Surgeons both came out against the idea of a commission setting Medicare payments to doctors. These groups continually lobby against reductions in Medicare payments.
Added bonus links:
- Slate article describing how a Supreme Court anti-trust decision gave rise to doctor-owned hospitals and other greedy doctor abominations.
- Denver Post article about a woman who died when a doctor-owned specialty hospital that didn’t have the resources necessary to handle her post-surgery complications.
- Book review by Harvard Medical School professor Arnold Relman, who attacks the “medical-industrial complex” and the whole concept of profit-driven medicine: “in no other country is medical care marketed and advertised so aggressively, as if it were just another commodity in trade.”
- New York Times article describing how the greediest hospital in Gawande’s article is one of the largest contributors to Democrats this year as it lobbies “to soften measures that could choke its rapid growth.” This lobbying has been successful, as language limiting physician ownership of hospitals has been stripped out of bills. According to Democrat Pete Stark, the physicians “just thought they could buy their way out of it, and it’s a sad commentary on the Congress.”
