More Dollars for Docs

In a main article The Silly Blog (March 9, 2018), we reported the amount of money received by treating physicians in Tennessee from Big Pharma (pharmaceutical companies) and manufacturers of medical devices for the years 2013-2014. It also was reported that a total of 1,074 physicians in Hamilton County, Tennessee and 15,627 across the State of Tennessee received $172,000,000.00 in additional sums of money from the same sources.

         A recent article released by the Social Security Administration did an analysis of the amount of time each physician spent treating or examining and treating each patient at Veterans Administration Hospitals and Clinics.

         The report was based on the statistics of the overworked and understaffed medical staff of the Veteran’s Administration (VA) physicians who were able to spend a minimum amount of time to earn a significant amount of money for these services. The report of the amount of average time spent on each patient was criticized by two articles in the Nashville Tennessean published on January 6, 2019 and January 12, 2019 by Anita Wadhwani and Mike Reicher styled “How Some Tennessee Doctors Earn Big Money Denying Disability Claims.”

         The article mentions several areas in the treatment of veterans that are alarming; (1) in length  of time spent on each patient; (2) high percentage of denials; (3) doctors with felony criminal records treating veterans; and (4) amount of compensation received by the treating doctors during the years between January, 2013 and July, 2018.

         If accurate, it is sad testimony as to how our military heroes are being treated by the government.

         It is particularly noteworthy that “Tennessee has among the highest denial rates for disability applicants in the nation, rejecting 72% of all claims in 2017. The national average for denials was 66%.”

Surely America can do better than this.