To Our Health

We have the highest per capita medical expenses in the industrialized world and are near the bottom in some of the incidental things like life expectancy. So I guess you can say we are being taken by the medical complex. Or maybe we just weren’t put together as well as other people. Of course there’s the outside chance that we’re being played for suckers by contributing to folks who want to make a whole lot of money from us rather than to a government agency that would be happy to break even.

But it looks like we’re stuck with what we have for awhile, with a slight measure of relief from some of the Obamacare changes due next year. Most of us have our own horror stories. These may not feel so bad because insurance is paying the bill, if you can manage to forget who’s paying the insurance. My latest scam involves a $2,200 charge for a blood test and a reading by an expert that took all of fifteen minutes from beginning to end, not including my initial waiting time. That doctor must be some expert!

The way the division of labor works in the medical profession, you have these doctors who know a lot about treating almost everything and those who know a real lot about treating just one thing. Sounds reasonable! So they all get paid the same, right? Wrong! The doctors who treat one thing, known as “specialists” are paid much more than those who know a little less about a lot more things, known as “general practitioners” or “GPs.” Naturally more financially savvy medical students are choosing to be specialists, leading to a shortage of GPs.

Consumers or patients don’t always know what ails them so they generally first go to GPs who, because they are scarce, have more work than they can handle. If my recent experience is a guide they are inclined to send patients to apprentices, at this point an exercise in futility for me.

I have three suggestions to handle this problem; one, lower specialists’ fees to those of GPs; two, raise GP’s pay to the level of specialists and three; this will keep them all away, stock up on a lifetime supply of apples.