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Money and Smart People

Money and Smart People - 2008-07-02 10:06



Money and smart people

I worked with cardiologists in the early 90’s and found that every patient that came into their office had an EKG done. I suppose that if they walked into a neurologist’s office they would get a brain scan, so this all seemed straightforward
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The Cardiologist would get a fee for reading the EKG and his office a fee for doing it – it helped to pay for the salaries and infrastructure.

Medicare changed its policy and started to refuse to pay for EKG’s done in a doctor’s office.

Within a week, every Cardiologist I worked with stopped doing EKG’s in the office and started doing 2D-mode echocardiograms for every patient who came in.
If the patient needed to be admitted to the hospital – the EKG was done there – and was charged to Medicare.

2D-mode echocardiograms cost $350 dollars, EKG’s $100.

The Echocardiograms were better diagnostically, but the change was done for clearly financial reasons.

The moral is – don’t fuck with people that survived graduate school when it comes to their money.

All people have a nut they need to collect – it’s what they need or expect and they will do anything to make it happen. It is human to do this and should be expected.

If you cut hours, humans figure out how to get overtime, if you stop paying for one thing, they find another.

And smart, educated people are really good at this.

Which leads to the probable answer as to why oil costs $140 a barrel?

Housing collapsed, Banks have no money, and commodities are priced to crazy town – what’s left?

The word on the streets is: speculators.

What does that mean, and why can’t I get a straight answer in a newspaper?

Seems like a good story – kind of reminds me of the electricity crisis that California went through in the early Bush year. In retrospect, it became clear it was Enron manipulation – but the media only reported in after the fact – when the money was done – the damage done.



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