If everyone got paid the way doctors get paid, we would see a revolution in how healthcare is delivered in this country.

I don’t mean getting paid “as much” as a doctor. I’m talking about getting reimbursed for the work you do the way many doctors do.

But, for fun, here’s what it would be like if you got paid “as much” as a doctor. In a nutshell: I’m making half of what I was making 20 years ago. So, imagine getting paid less and less year after year. Instead of getting a “cost of living” raise, you get a “cost of living” reduction. Awesome, right?

But imagine getting your paycheck the way doctors get paid by insurance companies. I will lay out a hypothetical situation to illustrate what I mean.

Let’s say you agreed to do a certain amount of work for $100.00. You do the work, but you don’t just get a paycheck for the work you did. No, you have to now appeal to your boss and request that they pay you for the work you did. And your boss has the option to pay you or not. Your boss has the luxury of changing the definition of work and can, therefore, decide that you did no reimbursable work after all. Nice, right? You have done the work, but you STILL have to ask your boss to pay you. And if you don’t ask your boss to pay you, he gladly will not pay you.

Now, imagine both. After a lengthy and costly process, you have to appeal to your boss, but your boss decides that you only did $98.00 worth of work after the fact. Your option is to take the payment or take nothing and fight it. Obviously, it will cost you more to fight it than to accept it, so you accept it. And you see where this is going. You now do $98.00 worth of work, and the next time you ask your boss to pay you, they decide you only did $96.00 worth of work. And so on.

What is your boss doing with the extra money they are taking from you? They are simply adding it to their profit margin. And what recourse do you have? Quit your job and get nothing? Imagine if you had (like a doctor) gone a million dollars into debt before you even set foot on the job. Imagine if you had invested 12 years of your life into doing that job. How easy is it to quit? You complaining about the pay only allows them to reinforce their message; all you care about is money.

And imagine if your boss had been part of a decades-long scheme to condition the public to not listen to your concerns. Who are you going to complain to? They point out that you are “worried about money,” but they need to add in the fact that you are a million dollars in debt. But they don’t.

So, does your boss pass these savings on to the customers? Nope. Instead, they use it to pay shareholders, lobby politicians, and regulatory agencies. Make note; they are not asking these people to allow you to offer a better product. No. They are asking politicians and regulatory agencies to help make their shareholders wealthier and wealthier. They ask the regulatory agencies to require you to do more work that adds no value to the customers. You are required to make it harder for your customers to get value for their dollar, and you have to pay the price for that. All that extra money goes into the pockets of those who add no value to your product. Your boss requires you to do less and less valuable work with your time while they make more and more profits.

Imagine if your job was like this. Imagine you had to sit back and watch your boss continue to take advantage of people, where nobody outside your profession cared about what you were going through. Or would listen to what you had to say. And you had to sit back and watch people, including yourself, get ripped off. Imagine watching the ship go down, but everybody on board has been conditioned to ignore your warnings.

They say never to fight with someone who purchases ink by the barrel. Well, these people have all the ink.

You all know the parable about boiling a frog. You put the frog in a pot of cold water and turn the heat up by one degree at a time until the frog is boiling. Well, consider the frog sitting in 211-degree water. The frog thinks everything is fine, but you’re trying to tell the frog of the danger, but the frog doesn’t listen. Sure, I could sit back and watch the frog boil. I might not have the option if the frog won’t listen. You are yelling at a frog who ‘knows better” than to listen to you.

The American public is sitting in 211-degree water. Like your insurance premiums, that temperature never goes down, only up. Your access and value never get better, only worse.

The people ripping you off will ride that ship to the bottom of the ocean. Don’t worry; they will provide you with a bucket.