Re: When Government Becomes Your Doctor
From: art fougner, md (evsono@pipeline.com)
Tue Jul 3 07:08:00 2007
Unfortunately, some docs have become would-be terrorists.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07032007/news/worldnews/qaeda_quacks_brit_terror_op_worldnews_andy_soltis.htm
I guess they took the Hypocritic Oath.
Art
At Mon, 02 Jul 2007, Douglas Krell wrote:
>
>It's interesting to see how physicians are portrayed in the media today.
>Doctors are either drug addicted cripples (Dr. House), dealing drugs to
>sports figures, or building bombs for fanantical religions. We've come a
>long way from Ben Casey and Marcus Welby. I venture to guess that the
>less autonomy physicians have to use their minds, the worse our image will
>be in the public eye.
>
>>From Leonard Piekoff: Medicine, "The Death of a Profession" 1980
>also read:
>http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4880
>
>"In medicine, above all, the mind must be left free. Medical treatment
>involves countless variables and options that must be taken into account,
>weighed, and summed up by the doctor's mind and subconscious. Your life
>depends on the private, inner essence of the doctor's function: it depends
>on the input that enters his brain, and on the processing such input
>receives from him. What is being thrust now into the equation? It is not
>only objective medical facts any longer. Today, in one form or another, the
>following also has to enter that brain: 'The DRG administrator [in effect,
>the hospital or HMO man trying to control costs] will raise hell if I
>operate, but the malpractice attorney will have a field day if I don't --
>and my rival down the street, who heads the local PRO [Peer Review
>Organization], favors a CAT scan in these cases, I can't afford to
>antagonize him, but the CON boys disagree and they won't authorize a CAT
>scanner for our hospital -- and besides the FDA prohibits the drug I should
>be prescribing, even though it is widely used in Europe, and the IRS might
>not allow the patient a tax deduction for it, anyhow, and I can't get a
>specialist's advice because the latest Medicare rules prohibit a
>consultation with this diagnosis, and maybe I shouldn't even take this
>patient, he's so sick -- after all, some doctors are manipulating their
>slate of patients, they accept only the healthiest ones, so their average
>costs are coming in lower than mine, and it looks bad for my staff
>privileges.' Would you like your case to be treated this way -- by a doctor
>who takes into account your objective medical needs and the contradictory,
>unintelligible demands of some ninety different state and Federal government
>agencies? If you were a doctor could you comply with all of it? Could you
>plan or work around or deal with the unknowable? But how could you not?
>Those agencies are real and they are rapidly gaining total power over you
>and your mind and your patients. In this kind of nightmare world, if and
>when it takes hold fully, thought is helpless; no one can decide by rational
>means what to do. A doctor either obeys the loudest authority -- or he tries
>to sneak by unnoticed, bootlegging some good health care occasionally or, as
>so many are doing now, he simply gives up and quits the field."
>
>--
>Douglas Krell MD
>
--
art fougner, md
"May The Wings of Liberty Never Lose a Feather." - Jack Burton
