‘Hospitals Stage Marketing Blitz’

Medical treatment of the sick poor is approaching collapse in Orange County. As physicians, we have over the centuries absorbed the cost of caring for the poor. Currently we are asked in Orange County to support the Indigent Medical Service because the county and state have given up funding medical care for the destitute.

Unfortunately, our reimbursement from Medicare--frozen for the last three years--is again being cut. As this federal funding has subsidized our care of the poor, we now have two options: We can lay off staff members, accept a further reduction in our standard of living and provide sub-standard care; or we can get out of medicine and seek a career that renews our energies, befits our intelligence and rewards our efforts.

Shifting the cost of unreimbursed indigent care to the middle class and their insurance companies has dramatically inflated health care costs.

This cannot go on.

Physicians enjoy caring for their patients. Unfortunately, the utter contempt shown to physicians by Medi-Cal makes it uneconomical to continue seeing patients who are “funded” (i.e., not paid) by Medi-Cal.

Funding unreimbursed care of poor patients--or watching service to the poor degenerate to the level of socialized medicine in Russia and Poland--is the political decision for Orange County today.

Squeezing doctors even further will cause a massive departure from the system.

CHRISTOPHER LYON, MD

Orange