> And then the hospital starts making less money (losing money), research funding dries up, and we start using mercury to treat syphilis again. I'm only half-kidding. I say hospital because all the laws that have changed in healthcare have driven most doctors out of private practice into hospital positions. since 2004, hospital-employed doctors have gone from 11% to over 60%[1]. One major reason being that with the wave of medical reform, the overhead of running a practice has skyrocketed. "Comfortable and enjoyable" are rarely applicable when you only start paying off your $1m schooling debt at 30.

Sorry, I meant suggest taking less patients, in addition to charging enough to match what you were making before. Not just doctors/hospitals making less money across the board. This will encourage more people to be doctors/open hospitals in the long run to fill the demand (then bringing down the price again, until we're at a nice equilibrium), which will bring down prices, and ensure that doctors take as many patients as is comfortable.

> I'm not sure what else to say other than "They aren't". These are laws, not administrative suggestions. Hospitals expect/need the same output regardless of the laws the government changes.

Is there no doctor's lobby? If the law is wrong/naive, there are measures you can take to make sure it's changed.

> I have a life-long condition. I don't care when my doctor is typing because I've had it my whole life, it's nothing more than maintenance, and I'll see them again in 6 months. Imagine being told you have 6 months to live from someone half-sitting behind a computer.

Yes, that would be a very insensitive way to convey such information, but that's also not the routine case, right? Also, I noted that it seems serviceable for the doctor to cut up the time (in a world where they could set their own billable hours, which could exist).

> My father doesn't eat lunch, using that time to catch up on notes. For as long as I remember, has left for work at 5am and gotten home at 8pm. He spends his Saturdays and Sundays working. And again, hospital employees don't get to choose how many hours they bill.

I didn't call into question how much current doctors work to catch up on notes -- from what the article said, and your personal experience that is a crazy amount of paperwork. If hospital employees don't get to choose the amount they bill, then maybe someone should change the hospitals? Or come up with some other structure for serving patients.

My main point condensed: The amount of paperwork doctors are buried under is insane, that much is clear. Doctors are some powerless group of victims -- surely there are some actions they can take to alleviate the problems, especially if what's best for patients is what the care about.

I did not know about these problems so reading this article was informational for me, but I found it lacking in the "what we're going to do about it" department.