Putting the Blame Where It Belongs

Maybe you have been wondering why doctors and others are not spending the time necessary when you see them for your appointment. I have been researching this for the last month and I have been surprised at the findings.

There are three main culprits that demand time of doctors and limit their time for properly treating you. The first is Big Government, the second is the Medical Insurance Cartel, and the third is Big Pharma. There are a few others that are related to these three, but I will leave that to your imagination.

With big government, they have forced many reports on doctors and other tasks like keeping digital records, and e-prescribing, which makes doctors work more hours to satisfy big government.

Then the medical insurance cartel, which includes Medicare and Medicaid, under the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which keeps reducing the amount they pay the doctors, the rest of the cartel follows lock-step. This forces the doctors to shorten the time spent with patients so they can earn enough money to cover office expenses and salaries of their employees. This means that they must see more patients. And yes, cartel is the correct term.

Many of the companies in the insurance cartel are paying their executives increasingly more money for their leadership. I have found records for one insurance company that pays its CEO almost 2 million dollars per year. I also know from other investigations that several of the CEOs are receiving over one million dollars per year. For an insurance company to pay a CEO this amount of money shows that they could care less if we can afford the premiums.

Of course, Big Pharma has its influence on doctors. Most send sales representatives to visit doctors, which consumes some time away from patients. They want the doctors to prescribe the medications their company manufactures and often they offer financial incentives to the doctor for each prescription written and filled. They also promote the positive side of the different drugs and skim over the harmful side effects.

Then doctors often create problems for themselves. Most are afraid of honest communications and try to confuse the issues with other terms. Patient engagement is one term they use to explain communications, which they don't use with patients.