Healthcare Reform..What?

I almost managed to get through my peds rotation with nothing more than a month long runny nose. Then, yesterday afternoon I felt the dreaded sore throat coming on. It was more than confirmed this morning when I woke up. Thankfully it is not strep again (swabbed myself at the clinic) and maybe it will be short lived.

2 more days of pediatrics for me. I will certainly miss a lot about this rotation. One thing I will not miss is the parents bringing their kiddo in stating "oh they just have a little cold." Which in my head I am thinking "yeah, no kidding, why in the world did you bring them in?" Am I wrong to think that every lay person out there knows that we can't do anything for a cold and it just has to run its course? What makes it all the worse is that the only parents that do this are those whose kids are on medicaid. Therefore it doesn't cost them a dime to come in every day if they want. Unfortunately, this is exactly the reason for rising healthcare costs and why expanding medicaid is a terrible idea. Now, you ask why this would bother me as a healthcare provider, that just means more business and money for me right? Wrong. Medicaid hardly reimburses the clinicians for all the work and liability. For example, the uninsured cash pay cost of a newborn baby exam in the hospital is several hundred dollars. How much does medicaid reimburse for that same exam on one of their patients? $20. Just an example of how screwed up our system is. I didn't mean to make this post about the state of healthcare in the US today, it just happened. I feel knowledge on any subject gives us the ability to contribute an educated opinion. This is a big subject that impacts all of us.