Although most religious traditions call on the faithful to serve the poor, a large cross-sectional survey of U.S. physicians found that physicians who are more religious are slightly less likely to practice medicine among the underserved than physicians with no religious affiliation.
Researchers from the University of Chicago and Yale New Haven Hospital report that 31 percent of physicians who were more religious—as measured by “intrinsic religiosity” as well as frequency of attendance at religious services—practiced among the underserved, compared to 35 percent of physicians who described their religion as atheist, agnostic or none.
Physicians have many compelling reasons to avoid spending the bulk of their time caring for the poor. It can mean forgoing professional prestige, free time and academic opportunities. It often comes with reduced salaries, decreased support staff and constant bureaucratic interference.
I doubt if any of the excuses after “reduced salaries” really count for much at the country club.
why should this suprise anyone? — it’s been my experience that most people who readily identify themselves as religious fancy themselves as pious and consider their status in life to be a result of being pious, and assume that the poor are all sinners and deserve to be poor.
whatever. non-religious liberals are just as guilty of this kind of crap — they want the state to handle charity so they don’t have to.
Americans are desperate to be rich, and that makes us selfish, bottom line: we are just not as charitable nor are we as caring as we profess to be.
In the US serving the poor as a doctor means accepting Medicare. I know many doctors that don’t simply because of the paperwork head associated with it.
Not certain I’d want to use a doctor who can’t figure out how to do his paperwork – or have someone on staff do it with practice management software. Difficulty is just another copout – to be discussed over martinis after a round of golf.
#2 has it right! Medicare is such a mess. By not taking that into account this study ends up with a logical fallicy and therefore erronious conclusions.
In addition I’ve seen several churches in different cities that have opened up free clinics and have a room where they can roll out the equipment in the church basement and presto they have an instant clinic that doctors can step into.
I think this study is making conclusions that they want to find, and pining it on who they wish.
>>I know many doctors that don’t simply because of the
>>paperwork head associated with it.
Yeah, who the fuck can blame them? Being expected to fill out some forms for a $500,000/yr salary? Oh, the horror! The horror!
As to the rest of the article, pfft. The title of it is “Religious Doctors __No More Likely___ to Care for Underserved Patients”, by the way. Not “less likely”, as the DU headline states. I’m willing to bet that 31% vs 34% is withing the margin of error for the poll.
#5
I’m willing to bet that 31% vs 34% is withing the margin of error for the poll.
That is the first thing I thought of but Eideard just can’t help himself when he has the opportunity to blast anyone with religious values.
After doing IT for Doc offices from 1995 to 2001, I can tell you as of ~ five years ago the paper work was roughly (depending on procedure) 3 times as much for ~40% the earnings for Medicare. One of the offices I worked for had 3 people doing Medicare only, one doing medicade & one doing all the rest. It was roughly a 50-50 private/public insurance office.
religious values = disdain
You can just hear them… Mm-mm-Mammon… i’m loving it!
Actually, for all the lamers falling over themselves to provide excuses for “poor” doctors, I managed practice management software systems as far back as 1985. Cheapskates who would rather hire 3 clerks to do paperwork that needs only an hour or two a day to update everything from appointments to insurance claims are just that – cheapskates.
The smart docs use software which on average also gets them their insurance claim checks in less time than the old-fashioned way. Whining.
Then, of course, there are the really chickenshit who would avoid the topic altogether. Or the geeks who don’t know anything about practical software.
This is going to be a fight between the Xians who can’t stand their image being tarnished, and the open-eyed non-Xians who know that image is all the Xians give a shit about.
Like #1 – There is nothing surprising to me about Xians not caring about the great unwashed masses.
#11 Its so refreshing to see someone with an open mind! ; )
This was also in the article but not included in the original excerpt:
This is such a non-story.
[oops]
[Duplicate post. – ed.]
#12 – It’s called experience.
#6, bill,
You miss the point. The christian religion advertises about how generous and charitable they are. How much they give to the community. Yet, they actually contribute less of their time to helping people then do the physicians who don’t advertise their charitable faith.
Also you might try reading both the article and Eideard ‘s actual editorial comment. There is nothing that suggests either is “blasting” religious values. The respondents and most christians do that quite well on their own.
BTW, I know you didn’t read the article. There were 35% of non religious physicians who did underserved work. Not the 34% you noticed. On usual samples that size, 1,144, the margin of error would be about +/-2%.
#10, moss,
Right on. I have discussed it with my own physician. He claims that he has one person spending about five or six hours a week doing medicare and two people doing private insurance. Most of their time is spent trying to get someone in the insurance office to agree to pay for a procedure and then filling out some more forms for that. His only issue with medicare is its pay schedule.
I think the headline is misleading except in the sense Lauren says, that you would expect a higher number, not the same.
I’d like to see the number of those “wanting to help the sick” or needy as a percentage of
1. Pre-med in college
2. Medical School Applicants
3. First Year
4. Graduates
5. After 5 years practice
6 Every 5 years until retirement.
Anybody want to guess on the curve?
For any number of reasons, this being one of them, for profit medicine is a bad premise.
And then there is this article from a doctor in rural southern California who uses cosmetic surgery to subsidize the cost of breast cancer treatment because if she relied on Medicare/Medic-Cal to pay the bills, she’d have to close up shop. Apparently, not all doctors are spending their time on the golf course; and while charity is always welcome and desired, doctor’s have bills that have to be paid too.
http://tinyurl.com/ysvl3z
19—Interesting read. I’ve heard the tale that some rural doctors save money by not even billing Medi-Cal but that sounds doubtful.
Yes, I believe that $200/sq foot office space should be reimbursed by MediCare at the same rate as $1000/sq foot office space. As should $15/hour office help with $30/hour office help.
So, a practice set up to care for the poor regardless of their ability to pay had a hard time making it? That sounds most likely?
Whats missing is the hard numbers. What was this doctors gross income, net income, taxable income during these time periods? — No numbers??????? Bullshit and pandering is the net result.
Although, no doubt, she is one of the better docs. Bravo!
#20, are you asking a question, or making a statement?
21—Are you asking a question, or making a statement?
#22, thanks for that. I really do enjoy reminiscing about my younger days back in elementary school. Oh, the fun that was to be had!
24–I was hoping it wouldn’t go over your head. Let the adult conversation continue.
>>BTW, I know you didn’t read the article. There were 35% of
>>non religious physicians who did underserved work. Not
>>the 34% you noticed.
Uh, that was ME who “quoted” the 34% figure, Mister F, not Bill #6 (it was a typo, btw). Are we to assume YOU did not read the comments? In any case, the 95% confidence intervals on this statistic are butting up against one another; a marginal difference between “religious” and “non religious” at best.
And most commentors here seem to cleverly ignore the statement the original article that “Physicians who STRONGLY AGREED (my emphasis) that their religious beliefs influence their practice of medicine were MORE LIKELY (my emphasis) to report practice among the underserved. ”
So, by defining “religious” as those who merely “go to church”, possibly just for show (ie the hypocrites) , rather than as those who hold deep spiritual beliefs, the validity of the whole article (and certainly its headline) is questionable.
But hey, why let little things like facts get in the way when it comes to the time-honored atheist sport of God bashing? Everyone knows the atheists are hard-nosed empiricists, right? Not falling victim to the flights of fancy that afflict the more spiritual among us? Haw!!!
23 – 24 – 22, thanks for that. I really do enjoy reminiscing about my younger days back in elementary school. Oh, the fun that was to be had!
Comment by Sea Lawyer — 7/31/2007 @ 11:04 am
24–I was hoping it wouldn’t go over your head. Let the adult conversation continue.
Comment by bobbo — 7/31/2007 @ 11:11 am
Are you two guys gonna invite some adults over?
#25 – But hey, why let little things like facts get in the way when it comes to the time-honored atheist sport of God bashing? Everyone knows the atheists are hard-nosed empiricists, right? Not falling victim to the flights of fancy that afflict the more spiritual among us? Haw!!!
When the Southern Baptist Church pays to repaint my van, I’ll stop bashing their fucking fake God.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to put one crucifix into each of these jars of urine.
>>When the Southern Baptist Church pays to repaint my van, I’ll
>>stop bashing their fucking fake God.
wtf? “repaint your van”? Is that supposed to make some kind of sense?
In any case, you’re cleverly (or maybe not so cleverly) sidestepping the real issue of my comment, which was that truly religious people (not those who go to church just to make golf dates and hand out business cards) are MORE likely to provide medical care to the needy than godless fucking heathens, frenzied in their holy-roller-like insistence that God does not exist.
Do you have anything to say about THAT, or do you just want to keep on bitching about how the Spaghetti Monster folks painted pot leaves on your Plymouth Voyager?
28—Hey Mr Mustard, you are rolling with some pretty good posts there. Congrats. Yeap, how categories are defined is pretty important before going off half cocked?
Now, explain to me again why god bashing is a bad thing?
28. “that truly religious people… are MORE likely to provide medical care to the needy than godless fucking heathens, frenzied in their holy-roller-like insistence that God does not exist.”
Let me get this straight, your argument is that “truly religious” people are more like to provide medical care to the needy than heathens. First, you offer no proof of that. But what I really find funny, is that you have to create a subjective definition of religious people. People who claim to be religious are excluded from your definition if they would not provide medical treatment to the needy. Basically you’re making a circular argument. That is, you’re proving your argument by defining your terms to suit your proof.
I could make the exact same claim: “that truly atheistic people… are MORE likely to provide medical care to the needy than those godful theists…”
It’s not that either statement is more true than the other, it’s that both statements are not provable. They are both based on subjective definitions tailored to suit our proofs. Any atheist you found who was not providing medical care to the needy would automatically be rejected by me because he or she would not meet my subjective definition of a true atheist.
“insistence that God does not exist”
And one last thing, atheists do not insist that god doesn’t exist. Here’s a free language lesson for you. A “theist” is someone with a belief in god. The “A” prefix means “without.” Thus, an atheist is someone without a belief in god. To illustrate, a rock is without a belief in god. A newborn baby is without a belief in god. A dog is without a belief in god. It’s not a positive assertion, it’s the lack of an assertion.
Once you prove to us objectively that there is a god, we’ll gladly believe. But after thousands of years, and many brilliant attempts, theists have failed to do that.