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Americans don’t like being told what doctors to go to or what healthcare plans to sign up for. This was what it said in a nice article by David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal on April 12th. Basically we, as a country, do not like our choices limited. Also saw in the piece was a horrifying quote by Ronald Williams, chief executive of Aetna Inc. For those who haven’t heard it before, here is his perspective:
"One of the lessons of the '90s is that every consumer insists on the right to choose a poor-quality physician”.
This is the kind of mentality that is basically running our healthcare system. Now you know why he wants to use P4P to judge physicians. How can we trust someone who has such disdain for our profession? Here is a guy that made over $19 million in total compensation last year (that would cover a lot of uninsured people, by the way) who really doesn’t like those who his gruntwork. Well, Mr. Williams, if you want to grade us and have patients migrate based upon those grades then about we allow those same patients to shop all managed care plans in ALL 50 states? You want to dance? I’ll dance. Let’s let the patients do some comparative shopping and choose their health plan the same way you want them to choose a doctor? Stop blocking passage of bills that allows this and we settle this the old-fashioned way; through supply and demand. Then we will see prices drop. Oh, wait a minute, you don’t want that to happen. How will you keep up your exorbitant pay package if we do that? Exactly. Poor-quality physician? How about poor-quality CEO? Aetme, Mr. Williams.
"One of the lessons of the '90s is that every consumer insists on the right to choose a poor-quality physician”.
This is the kind of mentality that is basically running our healthcare system. Now you know why he wants to use P4P to judge physicians. How can we trust someone who has such disdain for our profession? Here is a guy that made over $19 million in total compensation last year (that would cover a lot of uninsured people, by the way) who really doesn’t like those who his gruntwork. Well, Mr. Williams, if you want to grade us and have patients migrate based upon those grades then about we allow those same patients to shop all managed care plans in ALL 50 states? You want to dance? I’ll dance. Let’s let the patients do some comparative shopping and choose their health plan the same way you want them to choose a doctor? Stop blocking passage of bills that allows this and we settle this the old-fashioned way; through supply and demand. Then we will see prices drop. Oh, wait a minute, you don’t want that to happen. How will you keep up your exorbitant pay package if we do that? Exactly. Poor-quality physician? How about poor-quality CEO? Aetme, Mr. Williams.
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