I have an elderly neighbor I'm happy to take for his doctor appointments maybe once or twice a month because he is unable to drive himself. Last week he was telling me about his recent medical bills. One twenty-minute visit to his general practitioner cost nearly $600 dollars, which included $30 for merely writing a prescription. Another twenty-minute visit to his dermatologist was again nearly $600. In both cases, Medicare & Blue Cross (read: you and every other employed person) paid them in full, with no out of pocket costs charged to my friend.

He went on to say that if he were me, he would be angry about this. That was because though he had paid into Medicare, etc., all his working life, he was now receiving benefits that amounted to not only dollars to the penny that he had paid in, but to thousands of dollars to the penny that he had paid in. He said I would probably never see a penny towards my healthcare paid by Medicare or Blue Cross because when I retire (I am in my forties but have myself paid in for over thirty years), there would be no more money left in either of these funds, much like they say there will be no more money available to us younger people as Social Security.

I'm sure that the doctors could all take the position that what they charge is within the limit of what they are allowed to charge, which is probably so; but I think it's past high time those limits were lowered a great deal, to less obscene totals. Doctors should be in their professions to help people more than to live off the sweat of all working people so they can exist in the byzantine splendor of visiting potentates.



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