Affordable health care is whatever health care you can afford… Health care is not a right, it is a service that must be purchased. As a doctor with over 200k in student loans, health care prices should be whatever the market will bear to fully compensate me for my services. Anything less is socialism. I forewent over 10 years of wages during my schooling and incurred debt in the process to become a doctor. I deserve to make a return on my investment. People who cannot afford health care made the wrong life choices and I should not be forces to subsidise them in any way. Who should bear this burden? Familiies… not the government, not fellow citizens through transfer payments, and not health care practicioners.

There are physicians that actually care about the people that come to them for help. Made quite obvious by the doctor’s comment, there are those that just don’t have that natural caring temperament and are in the game for other reasons. Perhaps those 10 years of schooling has created a bitter doctor and you would be better suited as “Doctor to the Stars” in lieu of doctor to those truly in need of not just professional medical care, but a little understanding and support when people need it the most.
JP

Based on your post I would guess you became a doctor for the money. Do your patients mind you rifling through their pockets for payment during examinations? While it’s true many people are without health insurance by making “wrong” life choices, many are without through no fault of their own. Perhaps they should have all gone to medical school. So much for compassion in the medical profession.

CAn anything be done to keep from getting a lot of separate bills for a simple procedure. For a routine 1 hour outpatient test, we got 7 separate bills. This seems like a system that is out of control with no regard for good business practices. Would you tolerate this kind of billing from, say a auto mechanic?

>People who cannot afford health care made the wrong life choices and I should not be forces to subsidise them in any way.<

OK. I’m going to go out on limb here and guess that the anonymous doctor isn’t that at all. How else to explain his/her inability to write an English sentence that isn’t full of grammatical, spelling and syntax errors? How else to explain their total and complete lack of human compassion and understanding? How else to….

Oh. Wait. Maybe he/she really is a doctor…

If so and if the quote at the top of this post is really how this person feels, then there is a lot more wrong with the health care system than we might imagine; it is rotten down to the bone. If this person really believes, after ten years of schooling and dealing with patients, that people who fall through the cracks made “bad life choices,” then I have wonder “what’s gone wrong?”

On the other hand, I still cling to the hope that this was a specious post by someone attempting to “stir the pot.”

Pilt

I too hope these cold, heartless words are not those of a real doctor.