As Physicians’ Jobs Change, So Do Their Politics

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/health/policy/30docs.html?_r=1

AUGUSTA, Me. — With Republicans in complete control of Maine’s state government for the first time since 1962, State Senator Lois A. Snowe-Mello offered a bill in February to limit doctors’ liability that she was sure the powerful doctors’ lobby would cheer. Instead, it asked her to shelve the measure.


“It was like a slap in the face,” said Ms. Snowe-Mello, who describes herself as a conservative Republican. “The doctors in this state are increasingly going left.”

Doctors were once overwhelmingly male and usually owned their own practices. They generally favored lower taxes and regularly fought lawyers to restrict patient lawsuits. Ronald Reagan came to national political prominence in part by railing against “socialized medicine” on doctors’ behalf.

But doctors are changing. They are abandoning their own practices and taking salaried jobs in hospitals, particularly in the North, but increasingly in the South as well. Half of all younger doctors are women, and that share is likely to grow.

that the insurance companies (and with them the Republican party) are screwing them, that their private practices are becoming less and less profitable as they get lower and lower reimbursement and have to pay larger staff to handle all the paperwork, and as insurance company restrictions force them to spend less and less time being MDs and more and more time being automatons, they have become more liberal.

we can't bankrupt America over healthcare

Socialized Medicine is proven through out the world as the only way

Your language may be innacurate but the conclusion is deaf on. Single payer/universal care is an inevitable reality that is coming. The international corporations will see to that to ensure their own profit margins. The only question is whether it will be a GOP administration or a dem one. So far, Obama has had his chance. The question is, will he ever change his mind and go for it if given a chance. I am dubious.

are hitting healthcare very hard. The waiting rooms are thinning out, specialists are not getting as many referrals. Clinics are closing and consolidating.

It hasn't a damned thing to do with politics.

What's preferable -- seeing patients that haven't the money or the insurance to pay you? Or signing up with a hospital that -will- pay you - probably to see the same patients.

Maine politicians, especially the puke ones, are completely out of touch with the real Mainers. The year-round residents who eek out an existence year after year, through shitty summer jobs and whatever they can get in the winter. THOSE are the constituents they should be representing -- but they don't. They'd much prefer talking to residents with names like Bush or Kresge, etc.

Doctors in Maine want to survive too. But when their patients haven't a *pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of* -- well, those doctors are up shit's creek, too.

Universal healthcare would help everyone in that state. Even the doctors.