I am recovering from blog-writing-burnout.
When I started my blog last summer, my travel schedule permitted, (read, “I had a very slow speaking schedule last summer”), daily entries. But, fortunately, my speaking schedule picked up…. and now is literally zooming. We just booked the 12th engagement for June yesterday. This summer will be my busiest ever. ”But I should find time to blog anyway,” I say to myself. And now I’m recovering… and aim to post an entry once, perhaps twice, a week.
So as a crutch, let me republish a letter to the editor that was printed in yesterday’s USAToday Newspaper. Actually, it was edited a bit, so I’m printing the full text of what I wrote. Last week there was a headline article on the shortage of general surgeons in the US. Here’s my comment… and I’ll see what I can do about creating other blog postings over the next few days to get in a weekly rhythm. … Tray
To the Editor:
General surgeons are the canaries in the increasingly physician hazardous mine of health-care. Dedication to serving needs of patients is no match to the harsh overwhelming economic forces of reimbursement cuts, relentless unfunded governmental mandates, mounting malpractice premiums and other rising overhead costs determined by a free market system especially when physicians are denied free market pricing of their services by governmental and other third party payers. Even in a price fixed system you get what you pay for and if compensation isn’t enough, you simply don’t get.
The steady drumbeat of rhetoric for “universal health-care coverage” drowns out the footsteps of physicians leaving this most demanding medical practice and predicted shortages of general surgeons are exacerbated when medical school graduates choose less difficult clinical careers. Medicare can force general surgeons to accept pay cuts, but you can’t force medical graduates to become general surgeons or force currently practicing general surgeons to remain clinically active.
Achieving the political goal of universal health-care access and coverage will not occur until realistic funding for programs treats both patients and providers in a fair and equitable manner. Good health-care is expensive. Great health-care is more expensive. Nothing is free. Someone always pays. In a fragile health-care ecosystem devoid of general surgeons, patients will unfortunately pay the ultimate cost.
M. Tray Dunaway, MD, FACS, CSP
You can read the published version through this link: MARCH 3 Letters to Editor USAToday
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