Comments on: HMO Bait and Switch

By: surgerycenterok

surgerycenterok — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:54:42 +0000

Thanks for your response. Glad you saw the blog. My intent was the former, an HMO bashing blog. You sound like the kind of doctor I would want to see and the last kind of doctor an HMO would want on “their panel.” Cudos. I also bashed an unethical surgeon in this blog toward the end….there are plenty of them out there. Their presence in the medical marketplace is, I believe, due to the absence of the normal market discipline that weeds out frauds in every other sector of society. My brother is a family practitioner and I am and remain permanently impressed by the breadth of material he and you have to keep up with.

Cordially
G. Keith Smith, M.D.

By: Cary Carpenter

Cary Carpenter — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:37:25 +0000

After reading your blog, I thought I needed to comment. First of all I hate HMO’s, they do try way to hard to dictate what Primary Care Physicians do in regards to referrals, but what I didn’t like was the implication that we won’t send a “complicated” diabetic to an endocrinologist. As I am sure that there have never been questionable surgeries, caths, scopes, etc. by “sub-specialist” just to improve their bottom line. I don’t give a squat about my “gate-keeping” skills; I care about the outcome of my patient. Now if your intent was just to bash HMO’s and you used PCP’s as a way to make your point, then I am OK with this. However if your intent was to make PCP’s look inferior to the “sub-specialist”, I have a huge problem with that. As a Family Medicine specialist, I may not have the depth of knowledge that some “sub-specialist” have on a particular subject, but I do possess the breadth of knowledge, that has to encompass many areas of medicine and surgery. I would challenge any “sub-specialist” to try to keep up with the ever widening array of information that the Family Medicine physician has to, OB/GYN, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Geriatrics, General surgery (amazingly they ask us lots of questions about their recent surgery that the “surgeon” didn’t answer for them), Orthopeadics, Gastroenterology, Endocrinology, Cardiology, etc.

I don’t like the Canadian health system nor HMO’s and I can’t stand O”bummer”care, but in the future, please don’t infer that PCP’s are inferior physicians or that we would not put the welfare of our patients first by taking care of their needs including referring to a specialist over a potential bonus check.

Cary Carpenter, M.D.

By: surgerycenterok

surgerycenterok — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 22:09:31 +0000

Will do. Didn’t ever think that the Canadians’ biggest export would be their crappy health care system!

By: Lee Kurisko

Lee Kurisko — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:12:37 +0000

Keith, If you want more grist for the mill about how bad Canadian health care is and the implications for reform in the U.S., check out my book, “Health Reform – The End of the American Revolution?”.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Lee+Kurisko&x=15&y=17