>>Hmm ... others could not tolerate what MD's have?

Here's the full quote:

>>...who underwent residencies that used to be appalling and now are only difficult under conditions that others never would tolerate. You have to really, really want to practice to make it through.

I thought I was talking about a residency, not a competition to see who has done something unpleasant. Maybe we should discuss the plight of American Indians on the long treks and completely lose all context. Don't forget that med students generally had lots of choices and as I keep saying, the greedies you like to imagine have known for years to do banking followed by law. Also don't forget that increasingly physicians seek salaried positions where they have no involvement or benefit from service fees, making your interpretation less credible by the day.

>>You thought that the guy who stole $160million is an exception. I don't see it that way...

First, he was reimbursed $105 million in the affected period, most of which will be valid when he was seeing >100 patients/day. The various extrapolations including $160M and $190M seen in the lay media in the last 48/24 are misunderstandings by journalists and mostly are retracted.

Second, it appears he reused the same vial of an expensive drug for multiple patients and billed the fee that allows for a new vial per patient. Without getting into HCPCS codes and guidelines: to me it looks like a distasteful, unnatural rort and I agree with Sebelius who said that Medicare shouldn't have to pay for the same drug twice. He is fighting not to repay the $9M and gets a cross for that. It's also alleged that he diagnosed most patients with macular degeneration even before seeing them to pad his bills. Assuming that the allegation is true rather than pressure to force him to give evidence against his politician friend, then IMHO that's indefensible barn door fraud- and stupid, because you can't hide it from staff who make devastating prosecution witnesses.

But if you want to insist that this is commonplace- then do you have other evidence except individual cases that are so unusual as to be newsworthy?