Is The Doctor In?

When I was a kid and if someone in the family got sick, we called the doctor, and went to see him usually that day. Sometimes the doctor even came to our farm. Can you imagine that? Today, most of us don’t even try to see our doctor if we’re sick, we head off to a urgent care center. You can see your own doctor, it just takes some time. The following chart compares us to other countries in waiting time.

 We have the most expensive health care system in the world but we rarely can see a doctor when we want. There is no reason to blame the doctors for all this, they are seeing 20 to 30 patients a day. They just don’t have time. So the real problem is we don’t have enough doctors! Take a gander at the next chart to see how we compare to other countries in terms of doctors in relation to population.

Now that is a mind blower. I've heard the argument that the doctors will leave single payer systems to work in free enterprise systems. Well, we do pay our doctors more, but you can clearly see that doesn't make for more doctors. So, when someone trots that old argument out, show them the data.