Certainly this doctor and his family did a great thing by forgoing the debt owed by his patients. BUT, my wife worked and volunteered at a few private clinics around NY metro areas and I would wager that this doctor's clinic already makes a lot of money (2-3x that 650K) every year if not more.
As an example, one of the primary care physician's clinic that my wife (who is now in medical residency) used to work in NY Chinatown (a lot of patients there are on Medicaid/Medicare, etc.) still raked in at least $600K/year. The doctor sees ~40-50 patients a day. The doctor would write one or two bogus diagnoses to inflate the billing codes to make up for the 'loss in revenue' due to treating patients on Medicaid or simply making each patient encounter worth it.
Another example from a different clinic, where my wife used to volunteer, put on phone consultation fee in the bill when the patient called in to check about his appointment and asked a side question about one of his medication. It literally took that psychiatrist less than a minute to answer that call, but the patient is going to be footing ~$50-$100 from his/her co-pay.
In summary, some of these private clinics (not to mention the hospitals and we have read about their b.s. billing practices many times) are billing patients bogus stuff on almost every patient encounter. Some of them justify this by saying it's not the patient who pays the bill (but in fact, some patients with high deductibles/co-pay have to) or that they need to make up for their expected earning of running a private clinic (which is better than what a general physician would earn--$250K/year on average--at a hospital).
> In summary, some of these private clinics (not to mention the hospitals and we have read about their b.s. billing practices many times) are billing patients bogus stuff on almost every patient encounter.
One of the most pernicious things that’s cropped up within my lifetime is the idea that lost revenue is a justification for something else. A lot of low level (per incident, not aggregate) fraud and malfeasance gets justified this way.
Certainly this doctor and his family did a great thing by forgoing the debt owed by his patients. BUT, my wife worked and volunteered at a few private clinics around NY metro areas and I would wager that this doctor's clinic already makes a lot of money (2-3x that 650K) every year if not more.
As an example, one of the primary care physician's clinic that my wife (who is now in medical residency) used to work in NY Chinatown (a lot of patients there are on Medicaid/Medicare, etc.) still raked in at least $600K/year. The doctor sees ~40-50 patients a day. The doctor would write one or two bogus diagnoses to inflate the billing codes to make up for the 'loss in revenue' due to treating patients on Medicaid or simply making each patient encounter worth it.
Another example from a different clinic, where my wife used to volunteer, put on phone consultation fee in the bill when the patient called in to check about his appointment and asked a side question about one of his medication. It literally took that psychiatrist less than a minute to answer that call, but the patient is going to be footing ~$50-$100 from his/her co-pay.
In summary, some of these private clinics (not to mention the hospitals and we have read about their b.s. billing practices many times) are billing patients bogus stuff on almost every patient encounter. Some of them justify this by saying it's not the patient who pays the bill (but in fact, some patients with high deductibles/co-pay have to) or that they need to make up for their expected earning of running a private clinic (which is better than what a general physician would earn--$250K/year on average--at a hospital).