The conductor becomes less effective if also asked to manage the lighting. Nuance is lost if water balloons are hurled on stage during the most dramatic moments of performance. And so it has become with physicians.If we can allow, even for a brief moment, that this is true across the country in every doctor's office, might this matter to you the patient when you arrive in your doctor's office in your most vulnerable state? Would you like to place your mortal physical body in the hands of a person in such a compromised position?
We repeatedly trust our government with more demands, yet abhor its result. Our approval of Congress rests, at best, at an abysmal 15%. And yet, we indulge ourselves with the Utopian vision of progress in health care which necessitates an ignoring of the realities on the ground. Like an alcoholic, we are enabled in our denial, blindly handing our co-dependent government the keys to our own care.
Now, do we get in the car? Or do we take the wheel?
-Wes
4 comments:
Doctors might be the navigators but they don't own the car - their education is paid for by the US govt (residency and internship over 18 billion a year or 100k per doc) and the govt now pays for more than half of all care.
So docs are defacto govt employees..
I was 19 years old in the late 1970's when I began working in an acute care facility as what was at that time called a ward clerk. I loved everything about working in the environment and considered going on to med school. I changed my mind when I began to see the corporate lobbyists and government tentacles creeping in, taking over... more regulations, more control over your treatment decisions. I chose to explore more about alternative methods of healing when I became ill with a potentially fatal dis-ease. What is happening to your profession is a what I consider a hallmark symptom of an illness our entire country suffering from that is in the degenerative stage and is on life support.
I know of a few very good and established doctors who are refusing to take any and all insurance and are taking patients on a sliding fee scale, some taking cash only, some take both credit and/or cash. Their waiting rooms are always full.
Please, I beg you all to unite and take the wheel. Don't allow them to take full control of the health care system, because as you can see from their history in this country and in other countries...see the direction we as a country have been heading... They do not stop, they will take full control of it-all of it, and when they do, they have full control over each and every individual's very life. Individual liberty and freedom for all to choose will lost for good. Please take the wheel.
Just got back from the mandatory all physicians meeting where my Press Ganey re-education has begun. I will be meeting with our new consultant to improve my scores for the soon to come value based purchasing. I also learned that the category of uncertain appropriateness (not inappropriate or rarely appropriate) is considered NOT appropriate by the DOJ which means that we are open for investigation for completing interventions in patients.
Not taking the wheel has been the problem all along, first with lawyers, then with insurance companies and now with Congress. We have failed to identify ourselves as the experts, and begin to evaluate this vast organism that is medicine as it is right now and envision a new paradigm.
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