Dr Rosen: Is Obama Care in full swing now?

Dr. Milton: What is most amazing to me is how it even got to here. Didn’t Congress do due diligence on it?

Dr. Yancy: They haven’t even found one congressman or senator that’s admitted to having read the entire 2000 pages before voting.

Dr. Dave: Congress never does due diligence or we wouldn’t have so many unintended consequences after a bill is passed into law.

Dr. Ruth: I couldn’t believe that Nancy Pelosi admitted that she needed to have the bill passed so she could read it?

Dr. Yancy: Well I guess she didn’t want to waste her time if it didn’t pass? She must be one busy lady.

Dr. Rosen: But don’t we elect our representatives with the obligation to thoroughly research any measure before they make it the law of the land and force the citizenry to obey that law? Is it not Malfeasance in office not to even know the details of any bill that is passed? Isn’t that a prosecutable offense and grounds for impeachment?

Dr. Patricia: Rosen, you really make your point very clear about malfeasance. I just thought she was another incompetent member of congress. Yes, I think she should be prosecuted.

Dr. Joseph: Even though I’m retired, it pains me to see what’s happening to my profession. I think Nancy Pelosi demonstrates medical Illiteracy and incompetence.

Dr. Milton: You got that right, Joe. And so does our HMO which treats us as if we haven’t even graduated from Medical School with the mundane things they force us to do. One month they want us to give them the cholesterol levels of all our patients, and in a referral practice, the patients that also see a Cardiologist will have their lipids check by them. Since, we may not have that test in our file, they eliminated our quality incentive. One month they wanted us to bring in all our females of a certain age to bring their pap smears up-to-date. Well, most women resent such a focus, especially since they usually have a gynecologist that does their pelvic exam. Since our nurse practitioner died, we don’t do pelvic exams in our office. So we lose out on a significant financial incentive for a decrease in Quality of Care when there has been no decrease in QC. We tried to so some of that secretarial mapping for them one month, and after two afternoons of useless work, very few of our patients responded by getting the lab work or exam our HMO demanded.

Dr. Ruth: Since we are not involved in the HMO manipulation of care, are we talking about significant dollars?

Dr. Milton: At the last HMO meeting, I saw some of my colleagues that were reaping up to $15,000 in incentives per quarter for doing all that secretarial research for them.

Dr. Rosen: I think many doctors are not good business people and will have an employee available to do just that not realizing that the employee costs may exceed the incentive which in turn is not related to any discernable quality of care issues.

Dr. Dave: When will doctors cease being Pawns of the Medical Illiterate?

Dr. Milton: Not in our lifetime! They are too afraid of retribution. Abusive Peer Review by competing colleagues or Medicare Prosecution for using the wrong codes.

Dr. Rosen: That reminds me to warn all physicians to get out of Medicare and all government programs by October 2015 when the new ICD 10 codes will be implemented. Looking at the number of doctors prosecuted with the last change in codes, going from 16,000 to 64,000 in October 2015, almost any interpretation, whether ICD or CPT, could easily be interpreted as an error and subject to retribution, whether the Graveyard known as the National Data Bank or even a prison term. What a way to end one’s professional career.

Dr. Milton: The doctors that feel they are protected by being a hospital foundation employee will be very surprise. The hospital will be protected, even when using the highest paying codes. But they still will use Abusive Peer Review. Several were reference in this Newsletter.

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