45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul

You'd be better off reciting something by William Osler these days.

Albedo said:

You'd be better off reciting something by William Osler these days.

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That would be better than a several millennia separation, but not enough. Salk, Sabin, even Lister if you are talking great advancements with pearls of wisdom still worthy of quote. However in a field that is rapidly changing it is just a really bad idea to tell people to swear an oath to anything other than "I'll do my best with what is available at the time."

To refocus, and respond directly to the question posed in the thread title:

Only if it affects greens fees.

caw

For myself, it would take a lot before I would consider leaving medicine. I'm not a big earner, but then I practice a subspecialty that is characterized by few to no procedures, lots of phone calls and "face time"; basically, chronically disabled and ill kids. I rarely admit this as it hurts my sarcastic cred, but I love my job even while it gives me reflux; I love being able to make a difference for kids and their families and I would do it for considerably less money if I had to.

The rate limiting factors are time and quality of life, though. If any new health care plan indirectly resulted in the substantial increase of my work hours, specifically my night call, I'd struggle with it. Residency is ovah.

I agree that most of us would do it for less money--we're already doing it for less money each year! If you have a heart, that's what you do. I wonder how many people in other professions would agree to accepting cuts in their pay year after year and stay in the same job, though. At some point you begin to feel insulted...

..... But then you look at your patients and you realize it's not their fault, and then the softer side of you comes out and you just dig in deeper and keep on working.

TerzaRima said:

Actually, I was teasing dclary.

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emandem said:

I agree that most of us would do it for less money--we're already doing it for less money each year! If you have a heart, that's what you do. I wonder how many people in other professions would agree to accepting cuts in their pay year after year and stay in the same job, though. At some point you begin to feel insulted...

..... But then you look at your patients and you realize it's not their fault, and then the softer side of you comes out and you just dig in deeper and keep on working.

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The flipside to that though is that there are fewer people going to medical school as a percapita compared to previous decades. There was already a relative and in some areas severe shortage of physicians 20 years ago. It's going to just get worse as the population continues to rise, particularly when the cost of education continues to rise. Pay goes down, costs go up, pretty quickly it's a bad investment in the beginning and people go into other fields.

Good riddance to them.

It's my understanding that's already the case. I recall hearing that a quarter of America's post grads are MBAs and another quarter are lawyers. Pretty much the same here in Canada.

No wonder we're in so much trouble.

I'm not even getting into this conversation because the whole topic pisses me off beyond reason. I am admitting to not having read the comments because it'll just make me angry. I just had to stop by and say where the frak did that information come from. Because interestingly, I read an article the other day in which seventy percent of doctors surveyed (regardless of whether or not they were salaried) supported a plan that includes a public health option. How odd. Here, have a link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112839232&ft=1&f=1001

I also happen to know the site that the original article your quoting comes from, and it went into my category of biased beyond readability list before I got to this page. I'm all for debate. I'm not for overly biased publications that distort facts and publish questionable surveys. I've taken enough statistics courses in my days to recognize them.

Anyway, kaitie (who also thinks the bill sucks and supports a single payer plan) remembers why she avoids this section of the boards like a plague and disappears again.