A doctor's perspective. A lost job and a new CD etc...
I've been around the DP for quite a while now, and have now become a casualty of the "system". I'm an eye doctor in Nashville TN, and receintly lost my job..... not due to performance or personality issues, mind you, (I was the top producing guy in our group for the last 2 years), but because the CEO of our group decided to change much of the focus of the practice to "TennCare" patients, and I refused to sign up or participate. TennCare is Tennessee's version of government run "free" healthcare. It is a nightmare. Most of the patients who are covered by TennCare are nightmares.... 90% are lazy, entitlement minded, welfare-state, cocky, dirty, broke, litigious, and usually have 8 children by 8 different fathers. By some miracle, however, they always seem to have the latest Blackberry phones and cable TV at home etc.
If you need to reach a "representative" at TnCare to resolve issues about a patient's "benefits", it usually takes about 30 min of being placed "on hold" to get to an actual human being, who is almost always insolent and who will take no responsibility for ANYTHING except for transferring your call to someone else, who usually cuts you off when they try to answer the phone (thus requiring you to start the process of navigating the "IVR" again etc.)
THIS is government run health care folks, and Tennessee's version is about 390 million dollars in the red at last count.
Well, I can't do it anymore. They gave me the choice, I walked. I am in the process of trying to start my own practice, which will be based mainly on cash paying patients, and private pay insurance patients (for as long as that holds out anyway). This will take a while to get up and running, so I have been doing all sorts of things to generate income. I'm a musician/songwriter, so I just released a new CD (available at http://www.myspace.com/docholladaymusic if you're interested), I've been doing warehouse work, landscaping, fencing, painting.... you name it. The work doesn't bother me. Just because I'm a doc doesn't mean I'm too good for hard work, but what chaps my ass is that so many sheep out there think they are DUE free healthcare, and they don't realize that by pushing for more government control of their healthcare they will be pushing the healthcare providers right out the door. Hell, I'm not sure I even want to be a doc anymore... especially if the socailists get their way.
Remember, government cannot give ANYTHING to someone who didn't work for it without first stealing it from someone who DID work for it.
That's my two cents. Thanks for working so hard DPers, to advance the cause of freedom. It's hard to lose hope completely when I get to check in here every day or so with such a strong group of patriots.
Doc Holladay
Doc, you've got a great attitude...
I give you alot of credit exiting the stinking, nightmare of a government system, later to open your own practice. Don't get me started on my medical rant ...but I wish you luck to suceed in your future endeavor.
I wish all good doctors would exit the government sinkhole and once again work for their patients. I think there are quite a few out there like Dr. John Muney in NY....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JD13SHem3E&feature=PlayList&p=B1BE9FAB565F1314
...that want out of the thug government controlled system and are seeing their way to accomplish it. Unfortunately, NY's OPMC has some learnin' to do about REAL misconduct and get out of the way of those doctors who owe their loyalty to their patients! (Oh, great music, and pardon the Huckababble Show!)
"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom." Patrick Henry
"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom." Patrick Henry
Thanks, I apprieciate the
Thanks, I apprieciate the support!
Doc Holladay
Nashville, TN
http://www.myspace.com/docholladaymusic
www.reverbnation.com/docholladaymusic
Truth is treason in an empire of lies.
Good for you Doc
We've got to rid ourselves of the communists and the sooner the better.
If it means open revolution then so be it. I've got family as you do in all probability that died fighting some country for the cause of freedom. Seems a little hollow understanding the profit made from these wars by people who use patriotism to line their pockets aside from eliminating a few thousand Americans they don't feel have the right to exist in the first place. That is the truth of the matter. It has been for a long time. Prescott Bush helped fund Hitler, Rockefeller sold him fuel oil, Ford even sold him trucks...Is that worth killing others and dying for...Sorry for the tangent but I understand your feelings, they are my own.
Just one last kick in the nuts, then a final deathblow
>>I've been doing warehouse
>>I've been doing warehouse work, landscaping, fencing, painting.... you name it. The work doesn't bother me. Just because I'm a doc doesn't mean I'm too good for hard work, but what chaps my ass is that so many sheep out there think they are DUE free healthcare, and they don't realize that by pushing for more government control of their healthcare they will be pushing the healthcare providers right out the door. Hell, I'm not sure I even want to be a doc anymore...<<
I am sure you are right... being a doc is not for everyone...
... stick to be fence painter or warehouse worker...
... and after a while... you will understand what it means to buy private health insurance or to pay cash for medical care.
Do not worry too much about government control of healthcare as corporate controled healthcare is much, much, worse... ask milions of Germans ,French Canadians, Dutch, Sweeds Norwegians, Australians why people do not riot on the streets because of terrible health services and why doctors still want to be doctors and are not looking to become landscapers or fence painters.
Government controled healthcare is never free... the same is true about services of police fire departments and public education. Retirement checks are also not free... unemployement assistance is also not free... the only free things are multimillion bonuses and salaries of CEO and interest earned by banks from creating money out of thin air.
Instead of whining
Why not a little cause and effect. Why do people need healthcare in the first place. Do they take care of themselves. If not is that the fault of the people that do. Is it the fit people that sit around gain 100 pounds eating McDonalds everyday and cry they can't get healthcare because the costs are out of site.
Are you the person looking at this overweight, out of shape, chronically ill moron and thinking If I insure this pig he'll have a friggen heart attack right out of the box ? That ought to cost a few hundred grand...Have you looked into the fact that the criminal govt is up to their friggen necks in the healthcare/pharma racket...stacking the deck the way they are the stock markets..using taxpayer funds...Here's a little advice..First of all QUIT WHINING..Get your ass in shape, eat right..AND GET THE F@CKING GOVT OUT OF HEALTHCARE WHERE THEY DO NOT BELONG. The further the govt gets the hell out of everyones live the more the actual market supplants. Supply and demand is the most effective, efficient way to provide goods and services. If you'd do a little research, and crunch the numbers you'd have found this for yourself...Wake Up Already !!
Just one last kick in the nuts, then a final deathblow
depends on who you ask...
The reason they don't riot in the streets is because the government owns all the guns, ammunition AND health care...
"Do not worry too much about government control of healthcare as corporate controled healthcare is much, much, worse..."
Government health care IS corporate health care... you're just not paying up front for services rendered. But you pay, and a LOT more...
>The reason they don't riot
>The reason they don't riot in the streets is because the government owns all the guns, ammunition AND health care...<
You know what, for 25 first years of my life I was living in country where government owned guns, ammunition, food, work, education AND healthcare...
...and all of that "ownership" did not stop people for rioting on the streets.
In every couple of years there were riots on the streets.
In 1956 in Poland and Hungary (very bloody my father was donating blood for victims).
In 1968 in Poland and Czechoslovakia ( as 10 year old boy I remember long convoys of Russian tanks passing my town and heading towards Chechoslovakian border).
Iin 1970 in Poland ( remember smell of police gas on the streets).
In 1976 in Poland (when first time I participated).
And finnally 1980 when "Solidarity" movement forced govrnment to place thousands people in internment camps and declare marshal law (that "event" brought me to USA as a refugee) that lasted for 8 long years... and ended communism in Eastern Europe
Communism in my old country is GONE but Single Payer Universal Healthcare is not...
Do you think people in my old country are scared to riot against it ?
You know what, I DO know
You know what, I DO know what it's like to buy private health insurance and pay cash for health care. I've been doing it for years, as a doc and also before I became a doc, while I worked my ass off at blue collar jobs to support my family while paying my own way through school, so save your little 'holier than thou' attitude lesson for someone else. I'm not sure what your point is, but I certainly don't think that government controlled healthcare is "free". I DO want to continue to be a doc.... I'm good at it, and enjoy the work. What I don't enjoy and what drives me to the point of wanting to get out is the insanity that comes along with all the government regulations, controls, and just their basic interference with being to operate a practice as I see fit. What we need is for the free market to regulate health care..... from insurance rates to fee for service pricing, there is nothing that would work better than for the government/corporate machine to get the hell out of the way and let the market and demand for good service set the rates.
Doc Holladay
Nashville, TN
http://www.myspace.com/docholladaymusic
www.reverbnation.com/docholladaymusic
Truth is treason in an empire of lies.
>What we need is for the
>What we need is for the free market to regulate health care..... from insurance rates to fee for service pricing, there is nothing that would work better than for the government/corporate machine to get the hell out of the way and let the market and demand for good service set the rates.<
One thing I can agree with you... actual government is corporate machine.
But do you really think free market exist and is panacea for everything?
Free market regulated Wall Street. Who benefited???
Free market moved all manufacturing jobs to China.
Real free market ended hundred years ago and is gradually replaced by corporate market.
It is not big government to blame for... actually government is quite small... a few dozens international corporations and banks that through their represetastives in congress and senate build huge aparatus of control of their slaves known as taxpayers.
Insurance companies will not let free market regulate prices...
how they would be able generate profits big enough to satisfy multimilion CEO 's bonuses and salaries and pay dividents to share holders in Saudi Arabia and China
Wall Street is ANYTHING but
Wall Street is ANYTHING but a free market, and the free market didn't move jobs to China. China is a communist nation, so the free market had nothing to do with it. Basically, it comes down to those who cannot survive in a true free market economy who have found a way to exploit an oppressed people for slave labor. Nothing free about that. I tracked down several of your posts and it's pretty obvious that you are misled about many things. If there were truly a free market, Insurance companies and the CEO's you hate so much would have to compete just like anyone else. It's the lack of a free market that enables them to use the govt/corporate machine as a tool to dominate as they do.
Doc Holladay
Nashville, TN
http://www.myspace.com/docholladaymusic
www.reverbnation.com/docholladaymusic
Truth is treason in an empire of lies.
>It's the lack of a free
>It's the lack of a free market that enables them to use the govt/corporate machine as a tool to dominate as they do.<
I said that free market didn't exist for at least 100 years and maybe even longer. In absolute terms it never existed. Free Market is in many ways as utopian as communism. Those who are in power, control it by power of taxation and/or assigning privelages to different social groups. In the past such control was relatively weaker as there were many groups of power, often fighting each other for domination. In the global economy, power is much more concentrated and free market can exist only in the speeches of politicians.
>China is a communist nation, so the free market had nothing to do with it. Basically, it comes down to those who cannot survive in a true free market economy who have found a way to exploit an oppressed people for slave labor. Nothing free about that.<
China is not a communist nation anymore... It is a totalitarian govern country.
Moving jobs to China, India, and other sweat shops in Asia or Latin America is not about surviving... but increasing profits. You can't have a free market and forbid business owners from using the cheapest labor he can find. Right?
Free market (you can like it or not ) includes freedom to exploitation. If you are not allowed to exploit work of others you are a socialist or at least a union member.
If it is true that manufactured jobs were moved to China, because those businesses could not survive the "true free market", how can I expect to survive in "true free market health care"...
Bravo!! Bravo!!!
You have my ultimate admiration, sir!! I am in awe of the person who can step away from a "sure thing" to do the "right thing". I wish you well in your new practice...it will take some time to get up to speed, I'm sure...but remember the inspiring words of Dory from "Finding Nemo": Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...
By the way, is THIS one of your former patients? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9SPdh4Nzy4
.
------------------
BC
Silence isn't always golden....sometimes it's yellow.
------------------
BC
Silence isn't always golden....sometimes it's yellow.
"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." - Patrick Henry
LOL, that is awesome! Yeah,
LOL, that is awesome! Yeah, that's it, at least up until she "gets it" at the end of the video and makes a great point. Thanks!
Doc Holladay
Nashville, TN
http://www.myspace.com/docholladaymusic
www.reverbnation.com/docholladaymusic
Truth is treason in an empire of lies.
Ha!
I enjoyed your Drummer story.
Had your music turned up to eleven, that little push over the cliff.
congratulations on holding to your principles.
I'm going to have my wife read your post. We've recently had dealings with the medical system in our town. It was not good.
I told her it was a microcosm of National Health care, and problems would expand into a universe of bureaucracy. She's still hoping for a government solution. argh!
"I don't endorse anything they say"
~Ron Paul On the 911 Truth movement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGyhlNY0y1k
Liberty Dr. Network
You know Doc, you & SteveMT should start a Liberty Dr. Network where you all treat patients in the same manner as Dr. Paul --- Setting up payment systems & refusing gov't. payments/handouts. Bartering for services encouraged!!! I bet you'd have a lot more Dr.'s participate than you'd think! And I know I'd much rather prefer a Dr. like that! :)
Obama = O.ne B.ig A.ss M.istake A.merica
Obama = O.ne B.ig A.ss M.istake A.merica
Lacandy: I am humbled by your proposal. paul4won is also..
a doc and I believe reedr3v. I bet that there are as many as a dozen doctors on the DP. Even if we could get something going, The government would find something amiss, like the physician in NY who got shut down for charging a monthly fee for everyone's care.
Here is part of that article. This could be taken right out of Atlas Shrugged.
His patients agree to pay $79 a month for a year in return for unlimited office visits with a $10 co-pay.
But his plan landed him in the crosshairs of the state Insurance Department, which ordered him to drop his fixed-rate plan - which it claims is equivalent to an insurance policy.
Muney insists it is not insurance because it doesn't cover anything that he can't do in his offices, like complicated surgery. He points out his offices do not operate 24/7 so they can't function like emergency rooms.
"I'm not doing an insurance business," he said. "I'm just providing my services at my place during certain hours."
He says he can afford to charge such a small amount because he doesn't have to process mountains of paperwork and spend hours on billing.
"If they leave me alone, I can serve thousands of patients," he said.
The state believes his plan runs afoul of the law because it promises to cover unplanned procedures - like treating a sudden ear infection - under a fixed rate. That's something only a licensed insurance company can do.
"The law is strict on how insurance is defined," said an Insurance Department spokesman.
A possible solution that Muney's lawyer crafted would force patients to pay more than $10 for unplanned procedures.
They are waiting to see if the state will accept the compromise. Still, Muney is unhappy because, he said, "I really don't want to charge more. They're forcing me."
One of his patients, Matthew Robinson, 52, was furious to learn the state was interfering with the plan.
"The whole point is, he [Muney] found a way of paying his rent, paying his workers, and getting to see patients for the price," said Robinson.
"How can the state dictate you've got to charge more?"
http://www.vosizneias.com/28392/2009/03/04/new-york-ny-docto...
I agree with you. Not that
I agree with you. Not that it shouldn't be done, but like anything that makes sense and works well, it will pose a threat to the establishment, who with then proceed to use it's "power" to try and find a way to eliminate the threat.
Doc Holladay
Nashville, TN
http://www.myspace.com/docholladaymusic
www.reverbnation.com/docholladaymusic
Truth is treason in an empire of lies.
this is a
great idea.
"The two weakest arguments for any issue on the House floor are moral and constitutional"
Ron Paul
That is a nice idea. I
That is a nice idea. I think we're going to need some type of anti-establishment medical network or there won't BE any real healthcare out there.
Doc Holladay
Nashville, TN
http://www.myspace.com/docholladaymusic
www.reverbnation.com/docholladaymusic
Truth is treason in an empire of lies.
very funny
"90% are lazy, entitlement minded, welfare-state, cocky, dirty, broke, litigious, and usually have 8 children by 8 different fathers. By some miracle, however, they always seem to have the latest Blackberry phones and cable TV at home etc."
That's the Jerry Springer crowd!
White, Brown and Black Trash.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"God is at home, it's we who have gone out for a walk."
Meister Eckhart
Nice!
But I can't concentrate as well as I need to on medical management of Achilles tendonitis in the chapter I am editing, because it is such nice listening! ;-)
Hear hear and huzzah for you having the courage to walk your conscience. We saw our best specialists do that when we were in Canada (not such a severe situation, of course, but liberty is a popular idea). They walked south. :-)
agree,
nice songs, congratulations on your decision, good luck.
I'm happy for you
Sounds like you made a good move. I think if this socialized health care bs goes through we are going to lose a lot of good medical people.
chinkadaro
Best of luck with your new
Best of luck with your new practice.
...
I know how you feel. I'm a family practice doc and was....
essentially fired twice, both times in the same small town in Montana. The bottom line is that medical politics is brutal. The last time this happened, I was 55 years old with one kid in college, a high school senior going to college and a sophomore waiting in to go as well.
You sound like a very versatile person. You have a lot to offer any practice. You are a producer. Your patients should follow you to your new practice. It is good that you did not have a non-compete clause in your contract. Practices take a long to develop so stick with it. Advertising is also important to get the word out that you are offering people a better, unique form of eye care. You have to market yourself. You also may want to consider locum tenens work.
You are not alone. You plight is not unique. You have a unique ability to help people in a unique way, which is helping them see, and that is no small gift!
Thank you SteveMT. I have
Thank you SteveMT. I have actually been doing a small amt of locum tenens work already, and it's not been too bad. Thanks for the encouragement and for the help in looking at the bright side of things. I believe that the final outcome will be something better than what I was doing. In retrospect, I was making a good living but it wasn't much of a life. I didn't see my kids much during the work week, and I believe every five or ten years everyone needs to reinvent themselves anyway. Again, thanks, and take care.
Doc Holladay
Nashville, TN
http://www.myspace.com/docholladaymusic
www.reverbnation.com/docholladaymusic
Truth is treason in an empire of lies.
doc: Oh did you hit the nail on the head!!!!!!!!!
In reality, they did me a favor. I was miserable and so was my family. I was working my ass off with no home life and always on-call even when I was not officially on-call. Talk about a burn-out. Things are much better now. There is something better over the next rainbow. I telling you that it happened for me so it can for you also.
Take care doc. No matter what happens, don't do Obamacare!
I cannot wait until we hit a cashless society
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must. like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.-Thomas Paine
The R3volution requires action, not observation!!!!
and all us patriots can get on a barter system. Sorry about your job, working for yourself will be less headaches for you in the long run. Best of luck to you, see you on the other side.
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must. like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.-Thomas Paine
The R3volution requires action, not observation!!!!
TennCare
Was it Ned McWherter or Llamar Alexander who pushed the TennCare madness into law?
Ned Ray McWherter. It is
Ned Ray McWherter. It is rumored he said that he intentionally created/pushed TennCare through with the hope of leaving the Republicans (who were rotating into office at the time) such a mess to inherit that they would never be able to clean it up or live it down.
BTW, I dig your screen name. I'm a long time fan/researcher of Sitchin's work, and I think it explains most of what is happening today, with the push for global govt and more and more control from the NWO.
Doc Holladay
Nashville, TN
http://www.myspace.com/docholladaymusic
www.reverbnation.com/docholladaymusic
Truth is treason in an empire of lies.