Okay, somebody pushed one of my "HOT" buttons.
The doctors are NOT making the money they used to make. A lot of the money is going to insurance companies, 3rd party billing offices and to the government in taxes.
I have a friend of mine who is a primary care physician - Internal Medicine. He has one other doctor working for him who recently immigrated from India, (even though he is actually from Turkey.) He also employs 4 registered nurses, 2 LPN's, and three office staff.
He own his clinic here in suburban/rural Florida, and most of his patients are senior citizens, many of whom are on Medicare.
Two years ago, we were playing golf together, and he told me that of the 11 people who worked at his clinic, 3 had higher personal incomes than he did. The clinic grossed slightly more less than 1.4 million dollars in 2006, and his personal income was just under 80,000.
Of the 1.4 million, over 400 grand went into malpractice insurance for himself and the clinic. Another 340K went to the government in taxes. Medical and office supplies and materials were another 100K. He paid the other doctor a salary of 130K (from which he had to pay his own malpractice insurance of $60K), the Nurse Practitioners got about 90K each, and the rest went to the other staff. He was left with just 80K.
On the other hand, My son went to the emergency room from school with a broken finger right after the first of the year. As we had not met our deductible, we were charged for everything directly.
Here are the costs as originally listed:
Emergency room "Fee" = $485
Emergency room physicians fee to see him = $365
Radiology Group's Xray costs = $65
Emergency room physician's fee to look at xray (no radiologist available) = $410
Emergency room physician's Diagnosis Fee = $110
Emergency room physician's fee to splint and tape finger = $325
Hospital's fee for nurse to splint and tape finger = $85
Cost of aluminum and foam finger splint = $115
Cost of tape to secure splint = $18
Cost of elastic bandage to wrap hand and wrist = $31
Cost of chemical "cold pak" = $44
Miscellaneous emergency room "supplies" surcharge = $19
Total Hospital charges = $797
Total Radiology Charges = $65
Total Emergency room physician's fees = $1190
Total time spent at hospital = 55 minutes
Last week, the billing office for the ER physician agreed to eliminate the charge for splinting and wrapping my son's finger, especially as she didn't actually do it, an ER nurse did it. The also agreed to reduce the total of all the rest of the unbundled services to $475, after I had the church attorney inform their 3rd party billing office in Atlanta that "Unbundling" of medical charges is illegal in Florida, and in fact is a felony. (Like they didn't know it already) When went to her office and spoke with the ER physician directly
(wearing my black clericals), she said she had no idea that her billing company was unbundling charges for her services, and claimed not to have known that they billed us for services she had not actually provided. She said the billing company gets 30% of all monies collected on her behalf.
I'm still pissed off at paying $115 for the same foam and aluminum splint that costs $18 for a 3-pak at Walgreens.
On the other hand, we have met the deductible for my son this year already, and more than half the family deductible