Re: GEN: Anyone working for $25 and a goat?
From: Gordon Goldman (obgyndoc@swbell.net)
Thu Sep 27 20:49:16 2007
On Sep 27, 2007, at 1:19 PM, DoctorJoe@aol.com wrote:
> Is There a Trial Lawyer in the House?
> by Ann Coulter
>
> The only "crisis" in health care in this country is that doctors
> are paid too little. (Also they've come up with nothing to help
> that poor Dennis Kucinich.) In large part, our own doing!!!!
>
> But the Democratic Party treats doctors like they're Klan members.
> They wail about how much doctors are paid and celebrate the trial
> lawyers who do absolutely nothing to make society better, but swoop
> in and steal from the most valuable members of society. Not just
> the Dems
>
> Maybe doctors could get the Democrats to like them if they started
> suing their patients. Then the Republicans would hate you
>
> It's only a matter of time before the best and brightest students
> forget about medical school and go to law school instead. How long
> can a society based on suing the productive last? Already happening
>
> You can make 30 times as much money as doctors by becoming a trial
> lawyer suing doctors. You need no skills, no superior board scores,
> no decade of training and no sleepless residency. But you must have
> the morals of a drug dealer. (And the bank wire transfer number to
> the Democratic National Committee.) Joe, you sound bitter (Not
> saying we should not be)
>
> The editors of The New York Times have been engaging in a spirited
> debate with their readers over whether doctors are wildly overpaid
> or just hugely overpaid. The results of this debate are available
> on TimeSelect, for just $49.95.
>
> "Many health care economists," the Times editorialized, say the
> partisan wrangling over health care masks a bigger problem: "the
> relatively high salaries paid to American doctors."
>
> Citing the Rand Corp., the Times noted that doctors in the U.S.
> "earn two to three times as much as they do in other industrialized
> countries." American doctors earn about $200,000 to $300,000 a
> year, while European doctors make $60,000 to $120,000. Why, that's
> barely enough for Muslim doctors in Britain to buy plastic
> explosives to blow up airplanes! The statistics they cite may be
> total income, not what is earned from practice
>
> How much does Pinch Sulzberger make for driving The New York Times
> stock to an all-time low? Probably a lot more than your podiatrist.
>
> In college, my roommate was in the chemistry lab Friday and
> Saturday nights while I was dancing on tables at the Chapter House.
> A few years later, she was working 20-hour days as a resident at
> Mount Sinai doing liver transplants while I was frequenting popular
> Upper East Side drinking establishments. She was going to Johns
> Hopkins for yet more medical training while I was skiing and
> following the Grateful Dead. Now she vacations in places like
> Rwanda and Darfur with Doctors Without Borders while I'm going to
> Paris.
>
> Has anyone else noticed the nonexistence of a charitable
> organization known as "Lawyers Without Borders"?
>
> She makes $380 for an emergency appendectomy, or one-ten-thousandth
> of what John Edwards made suing doctors like her, and one-fourth of
> what John Edwards' hairdresser makes for a single shag cut.
>
> Edwards made $30 million bringing nonsense lawsuits based on junk
> science against doctors. To defend themselves from parasites like
> Edwards, doctors now pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in
> medical malpractice insurance every year.
>
> But as the Times would note, doctors in Burkina Faso only get $25
> and one goat per year.
> As long as we're studying the health care systems of various
> socialist countries, are we allowed to notice that doctors in these
> other countries aren't constantly being sued by bottom-feeding
> trial lawyers stealing one-third of the income of people performing
> useful work like saving lives?
>
> But the Democrats (and Fred Thompson) refuse to enact tort reform
> legislation to rein in these charlatans. After teachers and welfare
> recipients, the Democrats' most prized constituency is trial
> lawyers. The ultimate Democrat constituent would be a public
> schoolteacher on welfare who needed an abortion and was suing her
> doctor.
>
> Doctors graduate at the top of their classes at college and then
> spend nearly a decade in grueling work at medical schools. Most
> doctors don't make a dime until they're in their early 30s, just in
> time to start paying off their six-figure student loans by saving
> people's lives. They have 10 times the IQ of trial lawyers and
> 1,000 times the character.
>
> Yeah, let's go after those guys. On to nuns next!
>
> But Times' readers responded to the editorial about doctors being
> overpaid with a slew of indignant letters -- not at the Times for
> making such an idiotic argument, but at doctors who earn an average
> of $200,000 per year. Letter writers praised the free medical care
> in places like Spain. ("Nightmare" in the Ann Coulter dictionary is
> defined as "having a medical emergency in Spain.")
>
> One letter-writer proposed helping doctors by having the government
> take over another aspect of the economy -- the cost of medical
> education:
>
> "If we are to restructure the system by which we pay doctors to
> match Europe, which seems prudent as well as inevitable, we must
> also finance education as Europeans do, by using state dollars to
> finance the full or majority cost of higher education, including
> professional school."
>
> And then to reduce the cost of medical school, the government could
> finance "the full or majority cost" of construction costs of
> medical schools, and "the full or majority cost" of the trucks that
> bring the cement to the construction site and the "the full or
> majority cost" of coffee that the truck drivers drink while hauling
> the cement and ... it makes my head hurt.
>
> I may have to see a doctor about this. I should probably get on the
> waiting list now in case Hillary gets elected.
>
> That's how liberals think: To fix an industry bedeviled by
> government controls, we'll spread the coercion to yet more industries!
>
> The only sane letter on the matter, I'm happy to report, came from
> the charming town of New Canaan, Conn., which means that I am not
> the only normal person who still reads the Times. Ray Groves wrote:
>
> "Last week, I had the annual checkup for my 2000 Taurus. I paid $95
> per hour for much needed body work. Next month, when I have my own
> annual physical, I expect and hope to pay a much higher rate to my
> primary care internist, who has spent a significant portion of his
> life training to achieve his position of responsibility."
>
> There is nothing more to say.
>
> Joe P.
>
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