Point taken, but unfortunately, "angry patients" should read "angry doctors." I wish I could make everyone in America understand that rising healthcare costs are
not due to rising salaries of physicians. Our salaries are stagnating, and in many cases declining, while our overhead costs steadily rise. In running a medical office (essentially being a small businessperson), we also are affected by rising health insurance premiums in what we pay to cover our office staff and ourselves and our families. The rent on our office spaces increases yearly, our staffs expect yearly raises, etc. The cost of doing business goes up yearly, as it does with any other business, but our reimbursement often goes down year to year. Insurance companies on a whim can declare that they will start paying us 15, 20, 30% less next year. Medicare similarly threatens cuts to our pay every year.
So why does healthcare get more and more expensive for all of us as patients? We as a society demand the best, most expensive, cutting-edge healthcare, but we don't want to pay for it. We have great technology, and accordingly,
pharmaceutical companies make record profits, medical device companies make record profits (artificial joints, pacemakers, defibrillators, etc.), insurance companies make record profits, and malpractice attorneys make a killing (pun intended). Most physicians go into medicine because they enjoy the science, the challenge, and most importantly, taking care of people. They don't choose politics or business because that's not really their skillset. And unfortunately that's a downfall for us. Pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, insurance companies, and especially attorneys are very politically connected, with strong, well-funded lobbies. They will always get their share and much more. Whenever anyone tries to put a cap on runaway malpractice lawsuits in NY State, the proposition gets shot down in the State Assembly. Why? The Speaker of the Assembly is Sheldon Silver, a personal injury attorney. We as physicians have focused on patient care, and left the politics to others, and now we're screwed. We're not organized enough to fight for ourselves or our patients. This needs to change.
I certainly sympathize with the working patient who struggles to pay their bills, and whose insurance premiums take an inappropriate share of their income. On the other hand, realize that there are plenty of people in society who do the following: 1) As a patient, receive a check for many thousands of dollars directly from their insurance company to be used to pay the physician fee for a surgery, etc., but instead deposit the money, use it to purchase a big-screen TV or pay off credit card bills, and refuse to pay their physician. They either lie and say they never received it (easily checked against bank records), or say that they didn't realize it was to be used to pay their doctor's bill, and now it's already spent, and they don't have any money left. Or 2) Have an expensive surgical procedure performed without having any health insurance, and then refuse to pay the physician's bill afterward, saying they don't have the means to pay for it, but having bragged preop about owning a Cigarette boat and blowing through $2000 worth of gas every weekend. Both of these examples are real. The first happens almost every day. In what other profession or business is one expected to undergo 4 years of college, 4 years of professional school, and then 3 to 8 years of postgrad training at a salary that amounts to less than minimum wage when hours are factored in (seriously), take on often over $100K in student loan debt, and then start working in a sometimes rewarding, but often high-stress, tiring job under constant threat of lawsuits, and with no guarantee that your services will be paid for? Try walking into any other business and taking a good or service, and then refusing to pay for it. You would be arrested. And yet some feel it's perfectly acceptable to treat your doctor this way.
And while there are plenty of nice cars in my hospital's physicians' lot, the
really nice cars around here are the ones owned by entrepreneurs, Wall Street people, celebrities, athletes, and people who run "cash businesses."
A long rant. I'm off the soapbox now.
In the end, I think it was just a random idiot who did that to the OP's car...
