The Covid-19 pandemic continues to slam the practice of medicine, with patients’ infection fears and treatment delays putting at serious financial risk the providers of crucial medical services like primary care doctors and pediatricians.
At the same time, as is too often the case in U.S. medicine, the rich may be getting richer, as resuming care gives patients eye-opening information on the big money in orthopedic and plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures.
The coronavirus’s economic shocks may most accelerate changes — not all of them happy for patients — for primary care physicians, who account for half the annual doctor visits annually in this country, the independent, nonpartisan Kaiser Health News service reported.