I just cannot believe that you are saying this. Doctors are subsidized by the taxpayer to the tune of 85% of the common fee. This means that you are GUARANTEED at least 75% of what you would consider a reasonable fee.
This is not your regular business. Plumbers may charge the same but they dont do 20, 30 or 40 or more visits per day and the 'opposition' as in naturopaths, chiropractors, physiotherapists are not subsidized at all. Bakers, printers etc get no government subsidy and are subject to the same commercial pressures as doctors. The prescriptions you write are also subsidized - not quite to the same extent so that there are only commercial pressures for the poor and they have cards to identify themselves and if they dont you can "bulk bill" them. How can you possibly consider yourself in 'Ordinary' business. What other business or profession - many lawyers are broke - they have no subsidy. The pharmacists are essentially shopkeepers with subsidies, teacher have not much. People are just picking on Tom Bowden because he is in business, just like all the rest of us, for better or for worse, and he is doing better than most. He gets NO direct subsidy but because he got up earlier and is probably smarter than most he is doing OK. Here we go again - the left wing, greenie, hairy-legged lesbian tall poppy harvesters again. Sour grapes. All of us who claim to be working in the best interests are creaming it off as best they can. AND bulk billing rates are higher than they have ever been. Before the last election GPs got something like $18Billion extra just to shut them up - AND it worked. David de Bhal www.v-practice.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Oliver Frank Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 3:54 AM To: General Practice Computing Group Talk Subject: Re: [GPCG_TALK] argus 4.2 Cedric Meyerowitz wrote: > Oliver Frank wrote: > > That is *not* the only real difference. The important real difference that > you are neglecting is that the directors of commercial software vendors have > an obligation under company law to make as much profit as legally possible > for the owners of the business. They usually aim to achieve this by > charging the highest possible prices that the largest possible number of > customers is willing to pay. > ____________________________________________________________________________ > _______________________________ > > Now Doctors are in the same boat. Large number of GP's charge what they > think patients will pay and in some areas don't care because there is a > months wait to see the GP. Specialists also charge what they want because > the patients are still paying. I didn't say that there was anything wrong with commercial people in any business (in this case, commercial messaging providers) charging as much as they can. This is perfectly normal and expected commercial behaviour. I had believed that it is even mandated by law in Australia. Tom Bowden believes that it is not. I am currently trying to find out, and if I was wrong, will be happy to admit it. For better or worse, because GPs in our health system in their own practices don't the option of being salaried, we are forced to run our practices as a kind of business, if we want to earn a living. This naturally leads some of us to charge as much as we can, which for most of us still results in incomes far below those that we could have earned in any other profession or business. What is interesting and proves that doctors are not running their practices as normal businesses (that is, with the aim of maximising profit by all legal means) is that those of us who could charge a lot more than we currently do, especially rural GPs, don't do so, either because maximising income is not their first aim, or because they wish for humanitarian reasons to provide an essential service at the lowest price that provides the income with which they are happy. In summary, if you're in a "normal" business, your aim is self-enrichment. If you're in medical practice, your aim may be the same, but some of what you do may not be in your patients' best interests. For many doctors, the best interests of the patient still come before self-enrichment. -- Oliver Frank, general practitioner 255 North East Road, Hampstead Gardens, South Australia 5086 Phone 08 8261 1355 Fax 08 8266 5149 Mobile 0407 181 683 _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
