Date: May 4, 2009 5:55:59 AM EDT
To: letters@nytimes.com
Subject: letter to

"Where did all the doctors go?" (Letters, May 4) is more nonsense promoted by the HMO lobby and its dupes in the media. Should we pay people more when they are less educated, less trained and less experienced than people who know more, train longer and have more experience? Only in the dreamland inhabited by the puppets programmed by the HMO propaganda machine. More than a third of our population has a chronic or disabling health problem that requires expert care by a specialist serving as a principal (not primary) care provider. Most specialists are doubly credentialed, in internal medicine and in their specialty, and are more than capable of doing both jobs. It's time for an end to the attacks on them by the less deserving and jealous MDs. They have made their own bed of nails. Let them lie in it. Nobody put a gun to their heads and forced them to choose to serve a less needy and healthier population requiring simpler services. And nobody guaranteed them equal pay for less work.