Re: Health Care Reform & Health Care Jobs - opinions?

it's all very confusing, but having worked for doctors for so many years (and yes it's partly a conflict of interest considering my feeling about natural health care), I know first hand what it costs to run a practice, maintain malpractice insurance, pay off their loans, pay a decent wage and benefits to the employees...it's a huge, huge expense and pretty stressful. I've seen what medicare and some of the other insurances pay for procedures, despite what's billed, and it's not a lot considering the overhead in most private practice. I didn't work in billing, but I think if they participate with the insurance provider, they can't bill the patient for the difference, they accept what the insurance pays. It's gone down in recent years, as well. Which I think is what prompts the ones with less ethics to over-pack their schedules, over-bill, and do unnecessary tests and procedures. Happens all the time, and it's the reason I don't go to doctors (as a patient!) unless it's unavoidable.