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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 9, 1992<                   TAG: 9202100191
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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LET GOVERNMENT SET DOCTOR'S SALARY

I READ Gov. Wilder's speech about medical expenses in Virginia, and I believe that what he wrote is very accurate. I spent about 26 hours in the hospital and the cost was unbelievable.

It cost me around $200 for five pills! The hospital room cost about $360 and the tests about $1,000. It wasn't so much the bill that bothered me; it was the fact that I was no closer to finding out what was wrong or how to fix the problem than when I went in.

I believe that doctors are out to make a buck. They deserve decent pay, but not at the expense of patients. Why can't the government regulate a doctor's yearly salary, instead of letting him rip off the insurance companies? Why not let the government offset the doctor's salary?

If the nurses, who really do most of the work, got the money they deserved, and the doctors were set at a decent annual income, then the patients would get better care for their money. And medical expenses would be a lot less for insurance companies and patients.

I know that a lot of the offset of the doctor's salary would come out of Virginians' pockets through taxes, but I'm sure that small deductions from our paychecks would be quite less dramatic than what we have to pay for medical insurance and medical expenses. And that would benefit not only medical insurance recipients, but Medicaid and Medicare recipients as well. ROBERT C. DOSS JR. CHRISTIANSBURG

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