Doctors in America are harboring an embarrassing secret: Many of them are going broke.

[Laelth]

7. This does not surprise me.

Lawyers and doctors are very similar in many respects. About 50% of attorneys are sole pacticioners, just like doctors are. Most lawyers graduate from law school heavily in debt, and most doctors have the same experience graduating from medical school. Most lawyers (those who work for plaintiffs, at least) are paid principally by insurance companies, as are doctors. 90% of a typical lawyer's clients are incpapable of paying for the heavy-labor, high-skilled, and high-overhead services provided by the lawyer, and the same applies to doctors. So, in order to get paid, doctors and lawyers alike rely on insurance in order to get paid. Doctors get paid by insurance carried by their patients while plaintiffs' lawyers get paid by the insurance carried by the people who injured their clients.

I can say, from personal experience, that inurance companies are getting stingier and stingier while, at the same time, posting record profits year after year. The corporate model forces insurance executives to improve profits every quarter or risk losing their jobs, so both doctors and lawyers who represent poor and middle-classed people are getting paid less and less every year.

The end result of this process is obvious. If we keep heading down this road in the United States, poor and middle-classed people will simply lose access to medical services and legal services. That's where we're heading.

It appears nobody has a plan to do anything about it.

For my part, I think all insurance ought to be either nationalized or not-for-profit. Ha! Let's see that get though Congess!

-Laelth