Numerology Class

Okay no polls - just crunching numbers ... interesting, and scary numbers actually ... which Fox is blaming on Health Care - but I'm thinking it just comes down to dollars & cents..

Number of Family Doctors (Primary Care Physicians) have dropped 51% since 1997

More med students are going into specialty fields where they can make more money...why is this the issue?

1. it takes 10-11 yrs to educate new doctors
2. Primary Care Physicians make $120-190,000/yr
3. Specialists make +$500,000/yr
4. Average cost of med school $140 - 200,000 total (just for school and then they get low wages during residency/internship)
5. Malpractice Tort cost over $30.4Billion in 2007
6. Malpractice costs rose 10.8%/year since 1975 ... yes you read that right ... that means that malpractice costs have risen about 367% (actually more because I wasn't compounding it there)
7. Primary Care Physicians pay an average of $12,500/yr in malpractice insurance
8. Malpractice insurance makes up about 1.5% of med costs to the consumer (and if your state is like min there is another 2% tax already in your bill to pay for the state's low/no-income insurance plan)

Did you know that if you go to the hospital you are more likely to get seen by an 'Interalist" than a GP?

I have to tell you though - the worse thing we ever did was take our kids to a Pediatrician ... the best doctors we have seen have been the General Practicioners who see the whole family.

Now this is not to say that all GP's are great -- we have run into a couple of horrid ones ... but we have ran into less bad GPs than we have specialists .. and I can only go by my personal experience.

But trust me -- if there's something major - I'm going to a specialist.