Medical Care

Getting any kind of care in this country is a big problem. A lot of it stems from the fact that low knowledge people are making miss-statements about "socialist" medical care. They don't really know what they are talking about. Just take a look at countries like Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Yes, people pay higher taxes than we do, but they get back so much more and they are living a good life. I speak with some experience as my husband (now deceased) and I have good friends living in Denmark. We have visited with them and the have come here to visit us.

Pain clinics can help, I hope, also anesthesiologist are the ones to go for pain.

Agreed. We have two issues to deal with. 1) Not enough doctors, and 2) expensive complicated beyond logic health insurance system
How to increase number of doctors? Either we make medical schools affordable, and increase the capability of medical schools to train students (why are there limited places?) or we attract and import more doctors from other countries.... also keep the ones coming here for training
Our insurance system makes care more expensive than other countries. Medicare is more cost efficient because it doesn't have all the extra costs an insurance company has. I remember decades ago the big hoopla over "socialized medicine". And how do you think an insurance company HMO works? Same construction...
We all need quality affordable medical care. In economic terms, this means medical care is a "captive market" and not a free market. So capitalistic concepts and competition are not in the best interests of the patient.
Companies are profit driven so they have an interest to limit services to you. We don't need choice, we need coverage! Medicare is far more cost efficient

@heisenberg34 The pain pump doesn’t help all the pain that you do have? Was the MRI going to look for areas of inflammation or something more specific? And you cannot disconnect the pump for any extended period of time? What is the neurologist going to do for you? And do you have a PCP?
Your PCP should be able to refer you to the most appropriate doctors starting with an internal medicine doctor who can look at the entire picture. Go back to your PCP and see what she can do to help you. Also, Connect has a Chronic Pain Support Group that might help. https://connect.mayoclinic.org/group/pain/ I will ask the mentor who oversees the group if she would touch base with you.

Wow! You said it much better than I ever could. Thank you for that. One of my cousins was married to a doctor. Unhappily he is now deceased. In one of our conversations she told me that at one time her husband told her that the "best ones" are no longer entering medicine in university. They are going into other disciplines. But nobody is talking about that. But we the people have to contend with the doctors we have and when you look at the various posts here you see what the results are.

Thanks for responding. So many questions...lol. Let's see. MRI is supposed to look at lumbar spine and pelvic area. I will mention inflammation. The pump can, apparently, be turned off by the rep, who will be present at my MRI. Not all imaging centers can do a scan if you have an implanted pain pump. Just found out. Scrambling for another MRI place. I am hoping the neurologist can check out all my various nerve connections (or, whatever else they normally do). Would really be grateful if ANY doctor would refer me. Pain doc seems to have no interest in referring me to anyone else.
Yes, would like to hear what the mentor has to say. In eight years, none of the 18 docs, chiropractors, etc has been able to pinpoint what's really wrong with me. Just leep getting symptoms adressed.
The pain pump has never given me any pain relief from day one. It just sits in the front of my abdomen, bulging out like a dried out bagel. Might as well have that piece of junk removed. I think I still have a dissecting kit from my biology teaching days. How hard could it be? It's just under the skin.

And have you noticed how many Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners there are who are stepping in to treat you??? I see this at Mayo even though I have always had the doctor come in afterward.
PAs and NPs have no where the amount of training of a medical doctor. Nor can they do specializations like doctors but only get experience by working in a certain department. Yet they are being used more and more in medical practices and I have seen them assume responsibilities where they definitely should not because they totally lack the depth of knowledge. They are paid less than a doctor, but the institution can charge insurance the same amount (code the same) if they are "supervised" by a MD. My friend's daughter is a doctor and was very unhappy when they hired some PAs and said it was not realistic to expect she had the time to supervise them but was expected to sign off on what they did. The clinic finally decided to code visits at a lower amount and not require MDs to sign off on what the visit.
SO... PAs and NPs want more responsibility...so why not encourage them to complete MD training???? Why "dumb down" our medical system???? Time to give scholarships for medical training! They give tax breaks to companies to increase development in certain areas, and the shareholders end up very rich. How about making medical education very affordable and available to help everybody!

In the twenty plus years of going to the same family practice, I only saw an MD once. That was for a sigmoidoscopy. Always a PA or CRNP. They did a good job, but they could not answer many of my questions.

I can tell you that my former primary care practitioner was a DNP - a doctor of nursing practice, with 2 subspecialties - pain management and geriatrics - and was equal or superior to every family practice doc I saw during the 20+ years I saw her.
When she became an NP, she had her Master's Degree in Nursing Practice, 8000 hours of medical nursing experience, and 2000 hours shadowing physicians in the clinic that hired her.
Why didn't she go to medical school? Because by the time she was "ready" she had a family, including a in a specialty residency husband, and could not manage the hours required for residency.
Until we figure out a way to train doctors humanely, and not use them as slave labor in our hospitals and Emergency Rooms, we will see declining enrollment. And until we compensate family practitioners equally to other specialties, we will see fewer docs. The year I retired as a technical project manager from the Feds, my NP and my husband's family practice doc both earned less that I did. I did not have anywhere near the education of either of them, and did not hold people's lives in my hands!

I have friends who really like their NPs and PAs. However, when one compares the full training, apples to apples, they do not have the same training and clinical hours requirements as an MD. I and others I know have been misdiagnosed by them or given incorrect information (even at Mayo). If one wants to practice like a doctor, one needs to acquire the credentials.
Of course, I have known doctors who were not up to par ...much depends on the passion one has for one's work.

I fully agree that one should not take advantage of residents and they should be paid. And doctors should be paid a salary (like Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic do) and not this fee for service system that only promotes quick moving assembly line of patient visits.

Salaries are based on what the market allows, and by who controls the purse strings. CEO pay in the US is outrageous. Medicare could reimburse at a higher rate if one took the insurance company out of the loop and we had a single payer system. Just look at the financial documents of these insurance companies, the sales and marketing costs, administrative costs and CEO pay. And the provider has extra costs to process different insurance company policy rules. That is money that could go to increasing pay of doctors or giving us more benefits. That money does not go for healthcare!