When George Lai of Portland, Oregon, took his toddler son to a pediatrician last summer for a checkup, the doctor noticed a little splinter in the child’s palm. “He must have gotten it between the front door and the car,” Lai later recalled, and the child wasn’t complaining. The doctor grabbed a pair of forceps — aka tweezers — and pulled out the splinter in “a second,” Lai said. That brief tug was transformed into a surgical billing code: Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code 10120, “incision and removal of a foreign body, subcutaneous” — at a cost of $414.
I really appreciate the insightful discussion that you offered in this thread, especially a few comments up where you were (justifiably) annoyed but also still civil.
I live in the UK and a friend who is a doctor told me about when they had a doctor friend from the US visit. My friend joked about how little they get paid when you consider how much unpaid labour they did, and jokingly said “maybe I should move to the US”. Their US friend responded that the impression that healthcare professionals in the US get paid way better is mostly incorrect, especially if we’re comparing to a country with socialised healthcare. They did some number crunching and confirmed that this US doctor would be way better off in the UK
