Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Thursday, April 30. 2009

Is there a doctor in the house?

Megan addresses the issue of primary care docs. Fact is, internists are sort of our routine GPs now. It's not possible to be an old-time GP any more, doing obstetrics, pediatrics, minor surgery, cardiology, cancer, neurology, psychiatry. You couldn't keep up, for one thing - and no insuror would cover you. The closest things we have to real GPs today are ER docs.


The comments on her post are interesting.

Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss in Our Essays, Politics at 12:50 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

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We are still out here. I'm a small town family doc. Don't deliver babies (some in our town do, including c-sections). But I do minor surgery (took a skin cancer off today), see kids and get to manage all kinds of problems because we don't have specialist here.
There are not enough of us out here, and when it is free it will be worse
#1 aschoef on 2009-04-30 13:47 (Reply)
The main task of the GP here (and probably in most countries with socialised healthcare) is to keep people away from hospitals.
Less patients in hospitals means lower cost for the owner of the healthcare systen, the government.

So you get a few pills and are told to come back in a month if the symptoms don't get less.
They've now gone so far as to ban people from the ER without getting a written permit from their GP first to actually visit the ER.
#2 J.T. Wenting on 2009-04-30 15:00 (Reply)
Yes, my wife is one. Rural America has them, yet their scope of practice is slowly being curtailed all the while more is needed by their patients. My use to deliver babies, but stopped because the volume was to low. Its true, when it is all free, there will be less doctors and more midlevels, which are ok, but lack the knowledge and scope of practice. After all you go to see the doctor because something is wrong, not to be told to go and take two aspirin. Yet that is the problem, many people go when they don't need to overwhelming current supply, leading to more burnout.
#3 Doug on 2009-05-05 02:03 (Reply)

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