British Airlines asked it's employees to work a month for free:
How is working for free any different than being unemployed? Either way, you aren't getting a paycheck. Perhaps one could rationalize keeping their job. But there is no guarantee that that would happen any way.
In health care, depending on your payer source, many docs see 10%, 20%, 30% or more of their patients for free. It certainly isn't 100%, but with declining payment and increasing costs, some physicians find themselves heading right into bankruptcy. It's not unusual to find your practice go up in smoke if the business model finds its way into a heavy Medicare and Medicaid population. Some physicians I have spoken with are forced, by their business managers to cap the number of Medicare and Medicaid patients after their quota is met. It's the only way to survive in the socialistic payment model and capitalistic expense structure that has become American medicine. Your office is a business first. If you aren't open for business, you aren't practicing medicine.
Working for free is nice, when you do it on your terms. It's called volunteer work. Being forced to work for free is called slavery.
Lifestyle such as smoking, drinking, fast food consumption and also issues of pollution such as air pollution from coal powered power plants significantly increase health care costs. Physicians providing their services for free are basically providing free services so that cigarette manufacturers and fast food companies such as McDonald's and Coke and Mars Candy Bars and electric companies with lots of coal powered power plants enjoy great profits.
ReplyDeleteA solution: Doctors in a given county should go on strike except for emergency services until "health care service fees" are put on cigarettes, sugar Coke, "McDonald's", and coal powered power plants which would directly go into paying for healthcare for uninsured and Medicaid/Medicare patients.
If doctors in only one high profile county would only go on strike until such fees are in place it would set an example for the entire nation. If such fees were implemented nationwide it would lead to health insurance for everyone and it would contribute to better patient health since it has been demonstrated time and time again that higher costs for cigarettes leads to lower consumption, especially among teenagers who have less money to spend than adults.
In Israel the doctors have gone on strike and undoubtedly in other countries as well.
David MD