And in a fun story at the end of the year, Reuters claims that in their private practice British Surgeons charge the Highest fees in the World.  Now I know a little about this given that my father was, until his retirement last year, one of those NHS surgeons who worked 20% time in the private sector.  No question that the private sector was where he made the majority of his income (usually more than double there what he made in his relatively paltry NHS income), and there’s always been some controversy over this arrangement.  But although private fees were high there I’m very surprised that they were really higher than in the US, and specialists there make overall nothing like what specialists here do.  Last year the surgeon fee alone for my serious knee operation was, list price including assistant,  $21,500, and after I negotiated it down to roughly UCR, it was still around $12,000, or $10,000 for the surgeon’s fees alone.  Of course this didn’t count the tissue graft acquisition which was another $5,000 which I’m sure the surgeon’s office made a pass thru on. That was a for a three hour major but relatively routine surgical procedure.

So I asked my dad if he made 6,000 GBP equivalent of $10,000 for the average 3hr period he spent on this private operations and here’s the transcript of his response. "No (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) (bleep)(bleep) (bleep)ing (bleep), and you can (bleep) (bleep) in your (bleep)ing (bleep) and if I did I’d have (bleep)(bleep) (bleep)ing Ferrari, (bleep)(bleep) yacht (bleep)(bleep) house in south of France (bleep)(bleep) private jet (bleep)ing too".  So as they say in the medical literature, perhaps more research is needed!