I felt as though sweeping generalizations were made, and although many people have gone into medicine for money in the past, the money available in medicine is shrinking and anyone considering medicine as a career should be very aware of that. In that respect, therefore, let me say that I heartily disagree with the generalizations that were made based on my personal experience as well as my inherent faith in people, physicians or otherwise. This requires doctors to go through the HMOs, which as we've read may not even pay the doctors enough to cover their overhead and office staff. All of these issues are based on a complex economic structure. In response to Victoria, it seems to me that the funeral benefit was more profitable to everyone.
Health insurance is much more complicated to administer because of asymmetrical information.
There is a higher possibility for fraud. Death benefits are much simpler and straightforward. On another note, I am amazed at how prescient Rubinow is. His points about doctors' conflicts of interest and their motivations seems to have a lot to do with our recent website discussions. While it seemed pretty unreasonable, I guess that fear was really high.