Dr. Martin P. Solomon – Supreme Doucher of the Year

Posted on by

ms

Recently, a friend and fellow DPC doc was highlighted in a Boston Globe article.  It is great to see these guys get more attention and you can read the piece here. Dr. Jeffrey Gold “has stopped accepting health insurance. He charges a flat monthly fee for up to a dozen visits a year and is easily reached by e-mail and cellphone. He has far fewer patients now, but he can spend more time with each one.” I know, personally, that he truly is enjoying his job again.  It is really refreshing to see. Now to the good part.  Dr. Martin Solomon decided not to just leave a comment but to write an editorial entitled: ‘Personalized’ primary care is an egregious practice.  It is not long so here you can just read it below:

RE “BYPASS the insurance, these doctors say” (Page A1, April 20): The pursuit of an easy life with a higher income is a common American goal, but it should never be the rationale for the practice of primary care medicine.

Medical training is largely subsidized with federal taxpayer dollars, and I’m pretty sure I missed the course at Tufts Medical School, more than 40 years ago, that taught us how to take care of rich people. It is shameful that the Massachusetts Medical Society and the insurance commisioner allow the practice of shedding or denying care to patients who are not able to pay the extra fee for this so-called personalized care.

While doctors such as those mentioned in Priyanka Dayal McCluskey’s article cut their patient load to a paltry 600, the national and local shortage of primary care doctors and nurses continues to grow to an alarming degree, with an expectation that we will need more than 40,000 new primary care doctors and at least as many nurses within four years.

States that have allowed the practice of direct primary care to grow without control, such as Florida, New York, and California, have seen access to care suffer and the public deprived of decent primary care.

Rather than highlighting the joys of limited work and increased income, we should be demanding limitations to this egregious practice.

Dr. Martin P. Solomon

Brookline

The writer is medical director of Brigham and Women’s Primary Care of Brookline.

First, let me give you a little background of about Marty. He sold out his practice in 1998 to CareGroup, the corporation of six hospitals in Boston.  I wonder if he donated that money?

Here he is talking about the problems with managed care.  My best estimate of this article was around the year 2000. How did that work out for you, Marty? Is your “Pod 11” still successful? Yeah, didn’t thinks so.

Most importantly, though, Marty is also a doctor scorned. This was from an article in 2007:

Dr. Jeffrey Bass, 50, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Dr. Ronald Katz, 51, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, are the latest physicians to give up large traditional medical practices, in which doctors see a patient every 15 to 30 minutes, in favor of a slower pace and potentially higher income.

A third highly sought-after doctor who practices with Bass, Dr. Martin Solomon, 58, has decided to stay with the Brigham but to scale back to a smaller practice. He recently mailed a letter to most of his 5,000 patients asking them to voluntarily switch to another doctor in the practice.

“Unfortunately, for many, many years I’ve had trouble saying no to new patients,” said Solomon, who added that the administrative burden in his practice has become overwhelming. “I just felt I couldn’t physically do it anymore.”

So, Marty is pissed that his partners left him. He is pissed that they make more money than him. He is pissed that they see less patients than him.  He is pissed because he is unhappy.  Sorry, Marty.

Before, I tear him a new one, let me explain why I need to be brutal. He uses terms “easy life” as if we doctors are lazy. He uses terms like subsidized as if doctors who now have hundreds of thousands in debt should still feel guilty.  Forget the fact that as residents they are paid pennies on the dollar to treat patients in the hospital for years.  Does that not count, Marty? He claims that some states have access issues and care suffers?  Was this due to DPC, Marty?  No, it wasn’t. He also uses the word egregious, which means outstandingly bad and shocking.  Okay, them’s fight’n words.

Marty, here is why you are a supreme doucher.  You were part of the generation of doctors that sold us out to Medicare, insurance companies and hospitals. You supported the AMA and AAFP and they failed you but you kept on doing the same thing until the whole system collapsed.  NO ONE wants to go into family medicine now because of doctors like you, Marty!  Let that sink in.  It is a dead specialty, given away to midlevels because the job sucks.  But here is the caveat.  It does not suck doing DPC.  It is fun again.  No more paperwork, coding, dealing with administrators, dealing with Medicare, dealing with insurers. Somehow, under your theory, I am obligated to do that?  Am I?  Is it morally more ethical to be a miserable doctor who sees patients for seven minutes a visit doing a crappy job? Only when I am doing that you will bless me?

And what about all those patients being discarded?  Well, look at the second piece I highlighted above.  Boy, it sure seems you were doing the discarding, Marty.  You were scaling back and asking patients to go somewhere else because “the administrative burden in his practice has become overwhelming”.  Pot meet kettle.

Now let’s look at DPC.  For $75 a month, which is what I charge, it is not budget breaking.  If you add in that there are no copays, no office visit fees, and labs are cheaper, then most people come out ahead.  I had a patient yesterday that had a physical, her ears cleaned, OMT on her back and I got her a medication that was $100 cheaper via a coupon.  Her labs will be more extensive but will cost 90% less. Oh, and I will put my 60 minutes against your 7 minutes any day of the week.   Is all this still egregious, Marty?

So, in conclusion, I define a supreme doucher as someone who not only DOES not know what he is talking about but also goes out of his way to write a letter to spread his ignorance.  A supreme doucher is bitter, jealous and angry but doesn’t even realize that he caused all this as noted above.  For all these reasons I have declared Marty Solomon MD a supreme doucher.  Congrats, Marty!

 

Related Posts