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Patients should be scared

Letter to the Editor (2001)

The practice of medicine has become unsafe for physicians.

More and more doctors licenses are being suspended for various reasons that appears to be more based on cost saving then real facts. In today's best economy, the State is ruining physicians practices and lives down to the ground, using public humiliation and unsavory law practices. Most of the physicians reviewed appear to be hard working physicians to who insurance owed a lot money. 

Many of the licenses suspended are of older physicians, physicians who have moved out of state. It appears as if the State Health Department is trying to achieve  a fast number count to intimidate physicians in bowing to insurers who have shown nothing but clear intent to defraud physicians of time and medical care. Oxford Health Plan and Aetna exemplifies this situation. Patients should be scared, doctors are leaving the practice of medicine. The practice of medicine has become unsafe for physicians. Malpractice refuse to cover cost of most of these most often false accusations. Criminal law suits cost in the millions that only few doctors can afford. 

Many of case investigated by the Health Department are based on false accusations, competitive vendetta, insurance cost saving.  When reviewed most cases appears to involve hospital competition, patients defrauding health insurance etc.. however, complaints are all taken blindly by he Health Department as it is helping achieve their aim. Is it cleaning up the profession or saving trillion in health care cost? Lets behead a few hundred doctors that should help reducing insurances debts!  

The practice of medicine has become unsafe for physicians. Doctor are leaving the profession, dropping from plans in large numbers moving to area of medicine that do not involve HMO or insurance. It is time to save for your medical care. When you call the directory listings that your health care plan provides, you may not find one that can see you. "300 Doctors May End Contract With Aetna Managed-Care Unit  Hundreds of doctors in Fairfield County plan to terminate their contract with Aetna U.S. Healthcare on June 30, a move that would force 12,000 to 15,000 patients to find new doctors or a new health plan at year's end. But the doctors and Aetna said ..." more

 Government officials have become involved at last but it may be too late. "Lawyers in the office of Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer of New York are also reviewing certain practices of Aetna and other managed care companies, including how they determine which treatments are medically necessary. Officials there reiterated today that they did not think the Texas settlement addressed their concerns. "  HMO have become troubled businesses. " In just four frenetic years, the respected if somewhat stodgy insurance company once affectionately nicknamed Mother Aetna transformed itself into a colossal
force in a much-criticized business, health plans. At the end of the rainbow there
was supposed to be a gold mine of profits wrung from managing away the
inefficiencies and excesses of modern medicine. Instead, Aetna found itself the biggest target in an industry under siege. Its woes raise questions about whether the traditional H.M.O. approach to paying for health care has a viable future.  ''H.M.O.'s are in a very precarious position,'' said Larry Feinberg, a partner at Oracle Partners, a New York-based health care hedge fund. ''The model we all love to hate will become extinct in the next five years.'' 

Managed care companies like Aetna have come under heavy attack in Congress, the states and the courts. Aetna alone is fending off at least nine class-action challenges to such fundamentals of managed care as the use of financial incentives for doctors who keep costs down. 

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