New York Times Goes Tabloid Over Medicare

Spanish Strip Searching an American Woman
That was enough to send American men to War.
Different times. Now American police do the same thing in every police station in the country.

Mr. Hearst

 "You furnish me the pictures and I will furnish you the war."
                --William Randolph Hearst to Frederick Remington






Ah, the spirit of W.R. Hearst is alive and well at the New York Times.
Much as I love that paper, read it every day, Sundays especially, one has to admit when the editors there show they are simply not worthy of the great writers who produce that paper.
Suppose you are a cub reporter and you've just got finished going over the Medicare data released by the government and you find yourself standing before the editor who wants to know what story can be got out of all those numbers.

"Well, there's this group of ophthalmologists in Florida which does thousands of treatments injecting this drug into the eyes of elderly people to save their vision, and the drug costs about $2000 a pop, which the doctors have to buy, and after they get paid  by Medicare they get to keep about $350, so they pocket about $500,000 a year."

"And this drug really saves the vision of these patients?" the editor asks.
"Most certainly. I talked with our sources at New York Presbyterian and Manhattan Eye and Ear and they all say before this new drug all those people went blind. Since this treatment virtually none do."
"I don't know," the editor says. "Doesn't sound like a Pulitzer to me. Tell me, how much do the doctors get paid to do this?"
"I told you."
"No, I mean, paid, paid. Like what is the check Medicare sends them?"
"Oh, $21 million over the course of the year. They get the biggest check of any practice anywhere in the country, heart surgeons, brains surgeons, these guys gross the most. There's about 20 of them in this group."
"So the checks are spread out among 20 docs, that's a million a doc."
"Well, actually, they all get cut to the one doc who heads the group, so he gets $21 million."
"Twenty-one million!" The editor expostulates. "Well, that's your story right there!"
"Well, but that's like saying General Motors was doing great because they sold $21 million dollars worth of cars--but not if their costs were $25 million."
"Twenty one million dollars from Medicare to one doctor in one year. That's the story. That's above the fold, front page. That, there will sell newspapers, get us on every evening news show, grow hair on your palms and straighten the curve in your spine. That is a story!"

Florida Ophthalmologist