CALL FOR SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

We have allowed our medical professions to operate under a free enterprise system and look at what it got us. A simple 1.5-hour surgical procedure costs $21,000 for the operating room alone and $3,000 for the physician not counting all the other costs such as anesthesiologists, etc. A simple pace maker implant cost $35,000. A cataract surgeon charges $1,250 for 15 minutes and complains he cannot make any money doing cataracts. Still, these physicians cry they want less government regulations. Can any reasonable person imagine that prices would go down with “less regulations”?

They blame the high costs on insurance because their patients often sue them from malpractice. I would like to remind them that 100,000 (range from 50,000 to 200,000) people in the United States dies from medical mistakes each year. Given that figure, can you imagine how many medical mistakes they make that do not result in death? Maybe, it would help if they knew what they were doing. They say hospitals have to charge huge amounts because the have to operate emergency rooms. Ask them why they are against Obamacare, which takes care of that problem.

You want to make a physician and their republican colleagues angry tell them you want socialized medicine. Good,because their patients are angry! I am sick and tired of their greed. I want to live in a capitalistic society but I want socialized medicine because they have proved themselves incapable of self-regulation. As an aside, maybe we should also try to teach them how to be better physicians and replace their arrogance with humility and their greed with skill. I did not work hard all my life to save for retirement and then have them gobble up my savings because I am old.