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posted by martyb on Friday April 07 2017, @11:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the what's-up,-doc? dept.

This salary ranking might be of interest to Soylentils contemplating careers in medicine:

Not all doctors take home the same amount of money. Orthopedists — doctors who treat bone and muscle problems — make the most on average. Pediatricians, or those who take care of children, earn the least. And white doctors take home significantly more than their equally qualified peers of color, regardless of specialty.

This data comes from the WebMD-owned medical resource Medscape, which crunches the numbers on self-reported annual income from more than 19,200 doctors across 27 specialties for its annual Physician Compensation Report.

Friends in residency programs have often aspired to Radiology as a high-pay, low-risk specialty, but YMMV.


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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday April 07 2017, @10:31PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday April 07 2017, @10:31PM (#490569) Journal

    On the contrary, you don't need to be an expert to see that there is a lot of gouging, recklessness, and outright dishonesty in medical billing in the US. "You don't know what you're talking about" is exactly the kind of useless criticism I'd expect from medical people who know very well that their billing practices will not withstand scrutiny. I have personally experienced and witnessed enough of medical billing to know it's full of unethical practices.

    It's all too common for hospital emergency rooms to charge not a mere 10% above cost, or even just 2x cost, but over 100x. $307 is what this one place charged me for a 1L bag of saline solution, which Medicare says is worth less than $2. I received 3 bags, and where it got really weird was the insurance rate was wildly different for each bag, being $151, $64, and $27 respectively. Over and over I asked the hospital and the health insurer to explain the billing, convinced it had to be a mistake, and they could not. They had all kinds of justifications and reasons that were incorrect, and moreover, were unacceptable. There was of course the usual one that they have to charge more to make up for all those deadbeats who don't pay their medical bills. Yeah, right, pretty much every business has to deal with losses from theft and spoilage, yet they don't jack the prices up over 100x to compensate. One rep thought the different prices had to do with the day of the week, and that care was more expensive on the weekend. No, wrong. The $151 bag was on a Thursday, and the $64 bag was on a Saturday. Another rep thought it reflected the cost of drugs that were added to the saline solution. Wrong again. All drugs are separate line items. Yet another rep asserted that the prices on the line items in the bill were meaningless and that the real prices are set in a secret contract between the insurer and the hospital, and that neither he nor I would be allowed to see this contract. Wrong again. Two other reps couldn't understand the difference either, had no explanation, and tried to set the price of all 3 bags to $27 each, only to have the computer system reject the changes.

    Now, with such laughably incompetent understanding of the bill, by those whose job it is to understand it, why shouldn't anyone suspect the situation is ripe for waste and fraud, and in fact is deliberately overcomplicated to better hide fraud and discourage inquiry? I persisted and finally learned what I think is the correct reason. The price of everything depends on the level of care the emergency assigns patients, which ranges from 1, minor, to 5, need help immediately to avoid death. The 3 different prices for the 3 bags are the level 4, level 3, and level 1 prices respectively. There's an additional wrinkle. For level 4 and 5, the hospital is not supposed to charge separately for a bag of saline. That is included in the facility fee as it is understood that at that level of severity, saline will be needed. In any case, I see no good reason for such a complicated system. Maybe that one rep who said the prices were meaningless was right, for the wrong reasons.

    I spoke with one of the hospital's higher ups in their billing department, and he lied. He played stupid, pretended he didn't know what a Chargemaster is. He gave me the usual bull about the hospital being forced to charge high prices to compensate for losses elsewhere. He was one of the most dishonest persons I have ever spoken with.

    That's hardly all. There was another occasion in which my mother had a broken ankle. She was getting around fine with a walker, but the hospital pressured her to take a wheelchair anyway. In fact, the doctors discouraged the use of the wheelchair, as exercising her leg muscles was vital to a swifter recovery. They thrust a form at her that said she would pay for the wheelchair if health insurance refused to do so. I told them, over and over, that a friend had a wheelchair that we could borrow if needed, and I was ignored at first, then treated to a standard scare tactic. Said they couldn't guarantee her treatment if we didn't get their wheelchair. Well, Mom is a total sucker for that one, and I knew I was beaten. I asked what the wheelchair cost, and no one could tell me, supposedly no one knew. Got the old "don't worry, it's covered" line.

    US medicine gouges the public, and most people know it. Daraprim. EpiPen. Big Pharma trying to scare people away from Canadian pharmacies, and even persuading our government to confiscate prescription drugs at the border.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2