It's lengthy debates like this that help me understand the common trend of recent residency grads at my program:
1-find a job with a hospital affiliated clinic, or a hospital itself
2-build a small private fee-for service practice on the side
3-do whatever else you can on a salary basis to cover initial overhead
4-adjust your practice for whatever balance of insurance/no insurance that you are ethically comfortable with, officially leave the salaried position, and deal with fewer headaches.
So many of the doctors around my age (I'm 27) are incredibly disillusioned about healthcare that they are willing to go into major debt and run at a loss just to get to step 4 sooner.
Whoever said on page 1 or 2 that this situation comes down to personality had it pegged properly. You're not going to convince someone who hates government that we should have the government run something. You're not going to convince someone who hates private corporations that we should continue to have private insurance only.
This, I think, is such a bad stalemate that the only way to get anything done is to continue with revisions to the split system. So conservatives, suck it up; you'll pay taxes. Liberals, suck it up; there will always be a difference in level of care.
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