He said the doc gets 25k, it was later proven the doc gets $500. even the Board of Surgeons disproved his lies.
________________________ ________________________ ____________
The American College of Surgeons is deeply disturbed over the uninformed public comments President Obama continues to make about the high-quality care provided by surgeons in the United States. When the President makes statements that are incorrect or not based in fact, we think he does a disservice to the American people at a time when they want clear, understandable facts about health care reform. We want to set the record straight.
Yesterday during a town hall meeting, President Obama got his facts completely wrong. He stated that a surgeon gets paid $50,000 for a leg amputation when, in fact, Medicare pays a surgeon between $740 and $1,140 for a leg amputation. This payment also includes the evaluation of the patient on the day of the operation plus patient follow-up care that is provided for 90 days after the operation. Private insurers pay some variation of the Medicare reimbursement for this service.
Three weeks ago, the President suggested that a surgeon's decision to remove a child's tonsils is based on the desire to make a lot of money. That remark was ill-informed and dangerous, and we were dismayed by this characterization of the work surgeons do. Surgeons make decisions about recommending operations based on what's right for the patient.
We agree with the President that the best thing for patients with diabetes is to manage the disease proactively to avoid the bad consequences that can occur, including blindness, stroke, and amputation. But as is the case for a person who has been treated for cancer and still needs to have a tumor removed, or a person who is in a terrible car crash and needs access to a trauma surgeon, there are times when even a perfectly managed diabetic patient needs a surgeon. The President's remarks are truly alarming and run the risk of damaging the all-important trust between surgeons and their patients.
We assume that the President made these mistakes unintentionally, but we would urge him to have his facts correct before making another inflammatory and incorrect statement about surgeons and surgical care.
Sincerely,
L.D. Britt, M.D., FACS, Chair of the ACS Board of Regents
John Cameron, M.D., FACS, President of the American College of Surgeons
Andrew Warshaw, M.D., FACS, Chair of the ACS Health Policy and Advocacy Group
Christian Shalgian, ACS Director, Division of Advocacy and Health Policy
You don't have to post that up.
Listen, it's very simple. A surgeon will bill for his initial consult (Something which isn't mentioned in the material you pasted) and that consult alone can range between $700-$1,200 easily. Then, on the day of the surgery, as that article you posted clearly states, the surgeon will get reimbursed for another $740 - $1,140. That
DOES NOT MEAN that the surgery in its entirety COSTS only $1,140.
There are overhead costs that need to be accounted for that do not include the surgeon's pay. That is where OBAMA gets that 30K figure he threw around.
The insurance has to pay the hospital for the price of the Pre-procedural assessments that the Nurses and the PACU medical team does prior to the patient going into the OR. That alone encompasses pay for secretaries that register the patient, pre-procedural nurses that do initial assessments and take histories, doctors that then take a full HPI/Physical and then the Anesthesiologist's assessment/time.
The insurance then has to cover the cost of the OR room expenses. That includes (Aside from the surgeon), the OR nurses that are in the room, the OR techs, the fee for the equipment that the hospital charges and the fee for the Anesthesiologist's time and for, most importantly, the
MEDS he is pumping into the patient.
Afterwards, there is the price of the PACU (Post anesthesia care unit). Here you have post-procedural nurses and a medical staff that sees to the full recovery of the patient, along with pain management. Add to this the fact that every single item that patient consumes, from an 8 ounce apple juice container to even a snackwells cookies pack is charged up towards his insurance/bill and
THATS HOW YOU GET THAT 30K figure.
So, you see while the surgeon's role is a very crucial one, it is but a small part in the entire process. A part that still gets very well reimbursed, considering how much more money has to be dispersed amongst a large group of individuals and, NOT TO MENTION, a much larger hospital (That is running a business above all).
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P.S. Feel free to play this scenario out to your own private doctor and/or friends and you will see that this is why that amputation costs 30K. It's the full cost of reimbursement.
Now, compare that to an actual visit where a patient goes in to seek primary prevention methods in order to keep their diabetes at bay as to not have to face the grim notion of an amputation and that's where you truly see pennies. In that scenario, you have an outpatient visit, where the insurance does not need to cover the cost of the secretarial staff, nurses or even hospital overhead. The insurance only then has to reimburse the doctor/hospital for the visit, which is a minimal fee (The breakdown between how much the doctor gets versus the hospital per patient visit depends on the state and institution).
