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Dec 11, 2011
Tucson, Ariz. In 1966, the government was afraid that a lot of self-reliant, freedom-loving Americans would refuse to participate in a government medical plan. So President Lyndon Johnson forced insurers to cancel the private plans that enrolled about half of America’s senior citizens. There was no talk of a “public option competing on a level playing field.” To entice doctors, the government enrolled them automatically, and made it very easy and profitable to participate: no more problems trying to collect from patients who didn’t have money, or who preferred to use their money for other things. Now that Medicare is... read more
Dec 10, 2011
Tucson, Ariz. Claims that American medicine is unsafe, inferior, and too costly are simply false, though constantly cited by proponents of universal, government-funded care, write physicians in the winter issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. There are many reasons why a former sultan of Brunei and two Canadian premiers, among many others, came to the U.S. for medical treatment, writes orthopedic surgeon Lee Hieb, M.D., immediate past president of the Association of of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). One measure of better quality is a 20% higher cancer survival rate in the U.S. Hieb also challenges the... read more
Oct 7, 2011
While most physicians are genuinely dedicated to constantly improving their skills, increasingly costly bureaucratic demands for recertification may cause many to say “Enough!” just as baby boomers retire and a physician shortage looms. In the past, board certification was for life, after years of intensive training. For younger physicians, however, the certificate comes with an expiration date. Self-appointed expert committees of specialty organizations are now prescribing more and more requirements that force physicians to spend thousands of dollars and take big chunks of time away from their families and their practices. In the era of “evidence-based medicine,” these exercises are... read more
Jun 10, 2011
The incentives that are an essential part of recently passed healthcare reform have been tried many times before, always with the same result, warns economist Yuri Maltsev, Ph.D., in the summer 2011 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (www.jpands.org/vol16no2/maltsev.pdf) and in a presentation to AAPS members in Omaha last month. Before defecting to the West, Maltsev was a member of a senior Soviet economics team that worked on President Gorbachev's reform package under perestroika. The Soviet system looked good on paper, employing plan indicators to indicate hospital performance, Maltsev observes. Statistics such as infant mortality were misleading,... read more
Mar 31, 2011
Tucson, Ariz. Not so long ago, hospitals were primarily workshops for physicians, and both hospital administrators and physicians were working for a single purpose: healing the sick. But now many hospitals—whether tax-exempt (“nonprofit”) or not—have become big businesses. Their first priority is bringing in more revenue from government and insurers, and decreasing their expenses. Physicians who care about their patients may stand in the way of the business plan. Physicians, of course, are needed, and some are good “team players.“ They bring in patients, do profitable procedures, and follow the administration’s orders. Increasingly, they are hospital employees, or partners in... read more
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