what do you consider "fair" compensation?
I'm talking about paying someone (fully loaded) about 50k...which gives the employee/office manager about 30k...no health benefits thought about in that equation. Thats just about double the poverty line. (don't forget that there's almost 10% goes to gov and there are other costs associated with employment. Or are you trying to tell me that you can pay a quality office manager 15k us because your system is so much better than ours?
Even if my math is off by 10k it doesn't help the equation. You are still talking about a doc needing to mill through 40-50 patients a day to make as much as he/she is paying the office manager to run the office. The office manager has invested a high school education. The doc, 10 years of post graduate. Having them paid equal sounds fair, I guess?
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Ok, to reality
Now while those rates are, thankfully, not currently representative of the average...it is the office visit rate for medicaid and a lot of state run plans...and it certainly does emphasize that the government run programs place very low value on medical services...so low in some cases that it is not a sustainable model. (or it could be that they know the docs will make it up on charging much more than necessary on privately insured or uninsured patients)
Is it any wonder in a situation like this that there is every reason to over diagnose? If you can't make a living keeping your patients healthy (incurring just wellness visits at 20 per)..then you better make sure they catch something...
And your fine system has the whole wait time issue, which sounds a bit like there aren't enough doctors to meet an "on demand" model (which the folks down here consider "rationing" because we currently have an on demand model).
Over 60% of the country doesn't like what was done here...thats more than there are Republicans...so you can't blame all this discussion on folks like the teabaggers or the "dittoheads". Real, normal, everyday american democrats don't like it either.