Each morning when I arise the first thing I do is go to my home page to read the "prayer for the day". I do this no matter what urgent thing of the day is happening....be it a crisis bill to be paid, a sick wife, child, patient or something else deemed to be the most important item of the day by someone else. Having accomplished this, I can move on to the rest of the day with renewed energy and faith to carry on.
Quote of the day:
When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about. - Albert Einstein
There used to be a time when one thing was fairly certain, your doctor and his caring manner and most of the time the ability to support you through whatever it was you were going through, emotionally, physically and otherwise. And these were during times when things were much more uncertain. The government, nor the payors are our problem. To these folks it is always about the bottom line, not your health or welfare. They will manipulate the system to make their books balance and/or have a budget item that the OMB can justify. Not only are we fighting a "war on terror" and a "war on drugs" as well as a "war on illegal immigration". During a Presidential election year is a very bad time to make a long standing decision about our health care system. Believe it or not, those in decision making roles know bupkas about healthcare.
This is why it is critical for all physicians to become active in setting policy and aggressively as individual advocates for our patients.
The Health Care Blog, written by Matthew Holt, describes several issues that are current. He quotes Bob Laszewski in his BLOG about the SGR and the 18 month hold of fee reductions, only to rear it's head in 2010 with a 21% fee cut. Sounds like poker to me...."double or nothing".
As Bob describes it is the SYSTEM, not the fees and this is an issue only physicians can work out....this cannot be a 'divide and conquer' issue for us. Without going into great detail here check out my links.