Full Careers

Obama Health Care: Students/Health Professionals?

As a Pre-PA student who is looking to eventually work in the medical field, I've got a few questions for people training to be heath professionals and current health professionals. 1.) How does Obama's plan for nationlized health care affect you as a health professional or health profession student? 2.) Will you still continue your education/career if drastic salary cuts were made to your job to better marginalize the cost of health care? 3.) Do you feel that with the growing number of "Dr." titles (DNPs, DPTs, etc) enable health professionals to ask for a higher salary? How would they react under a government-reimbursment style medical system when they're salaries are regulated and have a glass ceiling? 4.) Do you feel frustrated or irritated when others accuse medical professionals of greed simply because they draw a large salary for an important and difficult job? I'm interested to hear how others feel about these issues!

Public Comments

1. His plan is to set up a massive socialized health care system that you and I will pay for with our taxes. Obama is still wet behind the ears and is using the failed policies of Jimmy Carter to develop his own. He is a socialist and will but the interests of the world before those of the US. He and al of his supports in Congress are American apologist who will create more government run programs, increase the illegals, raise our taxes and create power void in the world by removing our troop from strategic areas, that will eventually sink the good ship USA. The answer is affordable health care not free health care. The hospital, doctors, drug companies and insurance companies have to stop being so greedy and lower their rates, so that those who need it can get reasonably price medical care. Those who are not taking care of them selves, illegals or making the wrong choices, should pay more.
2. Well, I'm in Nursing School right now and i dont think my salary will be effected all that much. Nurses are in high demand and with so few nursing teachers and big competition to actually get in the school i know my job will always be there.
3. Whatever anyone's health plan is. I just want the same sweet deal as the D.C. crowd receives. I deserve no less as a legal, tax paying citizen.
4. Medical needs are expensive, nonetheless. we took my daughter to the hospital 2 months ago. She was given a drug test and pregnancy test. She was there for an hour. It cost 1400 dollars.
5. To answer your question; Working in the EMS field here are my answers 1) Increase the amount of 911 calls for bogus reasons, Right now I can say many people abuse the system, I see this increasing if people do not have to worry about paying the bill. 2) No, if health care goes socialized I see myself leaving the medical field taking my 15 years experience with me. 3) No, I see government telling medical specialists to go back into the general practice at a government set salary. 4) Yes, I work very hard for my pay. Try saving a life involved in a traffic accident once.
6. I am interested to see what he will do with this issue. It is ridiculus that we are one of the only industrial nations without a national healthcare plan. The truth of the matter is that America is already footing the bill for many who cannot afford health insurance. If you are poor, elderly, or disabled America is paying for you to go to the hospital. If we can pay for them we can pay for all. The national healthcare plan will be standard and optional. Some people will upgrade to a Kaiser Permanente while some will not. My tally from having my daughter was $12,000 not including prenatal checkups - just the delivery. I didn't pay a cent - all government paid. My family jokes that my mother has been paying upwards of $20,000 in taxes for the past 10 years so she got a small ROI . Lol
7. T-Bone brings up an important point, the abuse of the system. The abusers should be penalized greatly and have to pay. They should be paying now if they are abusing the system. Take care of that now. It happens now. Those people are either ignorant or just jerks.
8. 1) Obama's plan for socialized health care (call it what it is: when everyone is taxed to benefit a minority, it's socialism) will affect me as a health professional. Unlike many of the people here, I've seen first hand what happens when the government gets involved in health care. I've been to the VA hospitals when I separated from the US Navy in 2003. And honestly...I don't want to see that happen to our health system also. 2) The health care field is drastically underpaid right now as it is, including doctors (take into account the money they owe after 8-12 years of school). If the government began making drastic salary cuts, many (including myself) would leave the government system and go to the private clinics. This would further damage our health care system. 3) They'd leave the system and work in private clinics. These people spend 8 to 12 years of their life in school to learn to do what they do, and along the way they incur massive student loans. It takes decades of practicing to pay off their loans. If the government cut their salaries and gave them a ceiling, they'd leave the system and thus screw up our health care system even further. 4) Very. Not a lot of people seem to understand the depth of schooling or difficulty of the job.