{"id":33002,"date":"2009-07-20T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:10:10","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T02:10:10","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:10:10","slug":"doctor_i_ll_quit_over_obamacare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2009\/07\/20\/doctor_i_ll_quit_over_obamacare\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor: I\u2019ll Quit Over Obamacare"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Richard in Philadelphia, great to have you, sir, on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi. Welcome. I\u2019m a critical care and pulmonary physician outside of Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

RUSH: What is a critical care physician?<\/p>\n

CALLER: I take care of patients who are in the intensive care unit on mechanical ventilators after surgery. Sick patients.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I see. Okay, thank you. <\/p>\n

CALLER: They come in with heart failure, pulmonary failure. Anyway the patients… I work in the city hospital. They have a wide range of insurances to no insurance to the best, and everybody gets what they need. If they need a pacemaker, they get it. They need a consult for any physician dialysis, they get it. There\u2019s no questions asked, and no consultant has ever refused a consult. The day that some —<\/p>\n

RUSH: May I stop you there for a second?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Sure.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Don\u2019t lose your train of thought.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Okay.<\/p>\n

RUSH: But you\u2019ve reminded me. We never do hear these horror stories in this country of people who need the things you just described, being denied them. We never do hear that. We hear it from Canada. We hear it from Great Britain, but you\u2019re right.<\/p>\n

CALLER: It doesn\u2019t happens. It doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Everybody listening to you is wondering, ‘Well, you just made it sound like whether they can pay for it or not, they get it.\u2019<\/p>\n

CALLER: They get it. The ‘pay for it\u2019 is after the fact. They get what they need. I\u2019ve had uninsured patients who got defibrillators at $25,000 a pop, but nobody batted an eye. They needed it, they got it, there were no questions asked. The day a government bureaucrat tells me that I can\u2019t put a lifesaving pacemaker in a 95-year-old lady who\u2019s otherwise vital, is the day that I retire. I\u2019m 54 years old.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Right.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019m at the end of the line. I\u2019m actually looking at this more as a consumer of medical care than a provider anymore. My wife is a primary care physician and she takes all the insurances, half of which don\u2019t show up for appointments. Most of the patients are the ones who are getting free care, because there\u2019s no sense of responsibility anymore.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah, that\u2019s a whole ‘nother aspect.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah. And one other thing, if I may. The AMA. I am only drawing the AMA a few times and that\u2019s to get malpractice insurance. I have never been a member of the AMA otherwise and they\u2019ve really embarrassed themselves today, going for this proposal.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I\u2019ll tell you, I am so glad you called, because you just said something that we all know but we never voice or even realize. Be it the emergency room or wherever — and you\u2019re talking about intensive care. You\u2019re talking about people admitted to the hospital.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n

RUSH: What we do hear in this country are stories about how people do get turned away if they can\u2019t prove they can pay.<\/p>\n

CALLER: No way. I mean, people —<\/p>\n

RUSH: It\u2019s not true because we don\u2019t hear it. We do not have these stories of people dying because they didn\u2019t get this or that. We do hear these stories from countries that have socialized and government-run health care systems.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019ve gone up against insurance companies. Can I have a quick story? <\/p>\n

RUSH: Sure. <\/p>\n

CALLER: A patient of mine was going to go home on a tracheostomy collar with a hole in her neck and a lot of equipment after being saved after three months. The local independent insurance agent here would not cover the ambulance ride home. She lived on the third floor. So I actually called the insurance company up and I said that I will report them to the local news agency because what pictures they would get from a patient sitting on the lawn because they were refused an ambulance ride home by the insurance company.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And?<\/p>\n

CALLER: That got them to shake their rear end and get the ambulance. If I call a government bureaucrat they would say, ‘Press number nine and leave a message.\u2019<\/p>\n

RUSH: (laughs) Exactly right. Exactly. Illustrating how the private sector handles this stuff. Caregivers are caregivers.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019m a patient advocate, and I always have been, and so have my partners and the people with which I work. We\u2019re upstanding. There\u2019s bad apples in every group, but doctors are…<\/p>\n

RUSH: So you have people from all various economic circumstances in your hospital?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Oh, Rush, absolutely. And you do the best you can, and you communicate with the families, and, you know, when this comes along, I\u2019m hanging it up. I try to retire the best I can. So can my wife.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, let me ask you this. You said you collect after they go.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes.<\/p>\n

RUSH: They pay after they leave.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right.<\/p>\n

RUSH: We do hear about people who get care — and I\u2019ve heard this. I had a friend of mine repossessed the cars of people who welched on their hospital bills. But the hospitals make deals with them right? Do what you can to recover the costs.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah, absolutely. And there are plenty of patients that give false information, false cards, false numbers and you don\u2019t get paid. You try your best, but we have so much write-offs in uncollected bills. But I sought to pay any malpractice and my staff and the other doctors. I haven\u2019t really truly gotten a raise in 20 years, if you go against inflation because I don\u2019t have a lot of procedures and I just do medical bedside clinical care. But I don\u2019t have much. I have one procedure that I don\u2019t do very much. It\u2019s a bronchoscopy, but that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So you do it because you love it.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah, I mean, there\u2019s plenty of days you go home and you say, ‘I hate this but,\u2019 you know, the few patients that come by — especially after they die, because I take care of some sick patients — and they thank you for trying your best and making my husband\u2019s last day\u2019s memorable or comfortable. I get a lot of satisfaction out of that.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Are you serious when you tell us that if this plan, as you understand it is implemented, you\u2019re out?<\/p>\n

CALLER: The day that I am forced to not provide patient care that I and my colleagues deem critical, and some government, high school dropout is going to tell me, ‘No you can\u2019t have that. Granny\u2019s too old.\u2019 That\u2019s your Hippocratic oath, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Most certainly is.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah. <\/p>\n

RUSH: Tell me. In your sphere of friends and colleagues who are also in your business, is the sentiment common that you just expressed?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, certain doctors I work with are full-bore behind Obama, you know. I call a lot of them ‘the bow ties,\u2019 because they don\u2019t get out of the lab and they\u2019re churning out their papers.<\/p>\n

RUSH: (chuckles)<\/p>\n

CALLER: But they don\u2019t work on the front lines like a lot of us who get calls at three or four in the morning.<\/p>\n

RUSH: (laughs) The bow ties.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah, that\u2019s what I call them.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Because they don\u2019t get out of the lab. <\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah.<\/p>\n

RUSH: They\u2019re churning out their papers but they don\u2019t work on the front lines.<\/p>\n

CALLER: You know, they want us to see a few patients — they have to see a few patients — over time because they have to fulfill their obligation to the medical school. But other times they can\u2019t wait to get back to the lab so they can churn out more documents to get more funding from NIH.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I was playing golf yesterday with a guy who was telling me about his family. I knew him just from previous golf tournaments. He\u2019s not a close friend, but he told me he was very proud of his daughter who was going to go to medical school. She wants to become a golf surgeon and because it was golf, I did not say, ‘Are you sure she wants to do that given what\u2019s coming to health care?\u2019 but what would you tell somebody who wanted to be a heart surgeon?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, I have two kids and they\u2019re grown up and they\u2019re in their twenties and graduated and my wife and I never encouraged them to be doctors but we never discouraged them, either. We let them see what the real world is and they listened to us a dinner, our complaints but also our sense of satisfaction of doing the right thing for people. I mean it.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You do your best.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes.<\/p>\n

RUSH: — and you work around the obstacles that people put in front of you. Richard, great call. Thank you so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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