COTW: A Few Docs Get Big Bucks

US Person has advocated expanding Medicare instead of supporting the disastrous mess that is Obamaromneycare. Although it is a single payer system which is unacceptable to the insurance industry has successfully controlled some health costs, it is still a fee for service system. Consequently it can be manipulated and abused by the unscrupulous. The top 1% of medical service providers accounted for 14% of the $77bn recorded billings in 2012. Most of the top paid doctors are opthamalogists, followed by oncologists as shown in this chart from the WSJ:

Ophthalmologists see a high proportion of over 65 patients using Medicare to pay their bill. Certain procedures are particularly expensive such as intensity-modulate radiation therapy, used to treat tumors. The thirty-seven highest paid radiation oncologists received $63 million for delivering these treatments. The release of doctor specific information was delayed for forty years by litigation over privacy issues raised by the AMA after the Carter administration released a list of doctors receiving over $100,000 in Medicare reimbursements. No surprise here.