Update: McCain Selects Gov. Sarah Palin as Running Mate

[saden1]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

It has become in no way fruitful for my employer. We have begun exploring the possiblity of divorcing ourselves from the affiliation with the Medical School.

Currently, the Medical School's physicians and faculty train their med students within our hospital. Because doctors are busy teaching students, they are not out finding as many new patients as a private doctor would. So their productivity, in terms of generating hospital revenue, has always lagged that of private docs. As a result, they have needed subsidies from my employer to break even, and keep the Medical School and their physicians financially solvent. We have been willing to provide this subsidy in the past because replacing these guys with private or employed docs would be just as costly, if not more so. But with physician reimbursement barely growing over the last few years, and their expenses skyrocketing, they have needed an increased subsidy from us. Three years ago, we gave the Med School about 30 million per year, now it's up to 80 million.

We're at the point where it no longer makes sense to allow these doctors to teach students within our hospitals, and we've begun exploring ways to divorce ourselves from the medical school and employ a private physician model or an employed physician model instead.

Would it be a fair assessment to say your hospitals and the current health care system at large is failing as a business model and it/they can't seem to coupe with external pressures?

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by saden1

Would it be a fair assessment to say your hospitals and the current health care system at large is failing as a business model and it/they can't seem to coupe with external pressures?

No it wouldn't be fair to say that at all.

Most hospitals are staying open and competitive within the United States. How they cope with "external pressures" (aka growing costs of drugs and malpractice) is by demanding higher reimbursement rates from the insurance companies.

The insurance companies then are forced to pass that cost along to the patients in the form of higher insurance rates. The higher the rates go, the fewer patients can afford health insurance.

Is that good? Not at all. But someone will have to explain to me how using taxpayer money to provide coverage for all Americans will slow the growth of those "external pressures" - drug costs and malpractice expenses.

Just because you get all Americans covered with health insurance doesn't mean the underlying cost of administering healthcare will be affected.