The hearse horse snickers now for doctors too

[natrlron]

Carl Sandburg wrote a poem expressing the public’s negative attitude towards lawyers that has the arresting line, “Why does the hearse horse snicker hauling a lawyer away?” The poem was presented to us as first-year law school students to encourage us to be compassionate in our law practice, to help those who cannot afford to pay, to deal with our clients as people rather than just a source of billing hours, and to contribute our talents for the wellbeing of our community. Back in 1965, we were in an indirect way told that lawyers should be more like doctors.

How times have changed. While of course there continue to be compassionate doctors of the old school, the average contemporary doctor is a very different animal. They are concerned mostly with how much money they make, which translates into seeing as many patients as possible in a given amount of time and finding ways to bill patients (and their insurance companies) for as many procedures, tests, and consultations as possible.

Doctors like to blame the federal government and insurance companies for this transformation. They say they have so much paper work to do that they have little time left for doctoring, and that the fees they are paid are so inadequate that they have to charge as many billing items as possible just to get a decent financial return.

Nonsense. While there is no question that there is lots of paper work today, the main culprit is that doctors have become capitalists. Both in their practice groups and in most hospitals, the healing profession has become a for-profit corporate entity whose main concern is the bottom line. As such, they find every conceivable way to milk money from their patients, just like one would expect from a corporation. And the relationship between doctor and patient has been transformed accordingly. Small wonder that some now refer to the Hippocratic Oath that all doctors take as the “hypocritic” oath.

Bottom line ... doctors and hospitals should not be profit centers. That orientation is inimical to the ideals of medical practice and caring for patients. By all means, doctors and others involved in the profession should make good livings because they provide a valuable service to people and society. But beyond that, to profit from ones patients should raise ethical questions.

Why does the hearse horse snicker when hauling a doctor away? Isn’t it obvious!

For more on this and other issues, visit my blog, http://PreservingAmericanGreatness.blogspot.com

[DonCoquixote]

1. Hell yes

especially the bastards that act as fronts for Florida Pill Mills, while voting GOP to keep Obamacare out.

[redqueen]

2. Very well said.

The love of money is the root of all evil. We have been watching that saying played out (again) for over 30 years.

[Lint Head]

3. Also, health insurance corporations are nothing more than banks that add to the cost

of real health care. They should be put out of the health care business. They have become the norm and have grown in the way a parasite attaches to the host! Eventually the host dies. Insurance started as coverage for goods, assets and possessions aka Lloyds of London. They saw an opportunity in profiting on misery and death and it is now the standard.

[MedleyMisty]

4. This summer I nearly bled to death from an ulcer

My doctor was totally awesome, and everyone who took care of me in the hospital was caring and kind. I looked up information on my doctor later. He supports a private school for underprivileged children, and he and the doctors he works with do a lot of support for the community and give free checkups and things.

I also saw a pic of doctors protesting at Occupy Wall Street the other day.

[redqueen]

5. Of course they aren't all the same...

just as not all the wealthy people are selfish, thoughtless assholes who love money more than anything else.

However not enough doctors care about their profession more than their bank accounts, and the proof is how few of them fought for a public option.

[Warpy]

6. The average doc graduates with a crippling amount of debt

A quarter of a million dollars of student debt was once quoted to me as the average. Think about that, about that kind of payment that yuppies might make on a primary residence that has to come first before the doc even thinks of a residence.

You bet your ass they have to see as many people as possible, to hope like hell they don't end up being that 5% of docs responsible for 50% of malpractice payouts year after year, to climb on the same treadmill the rest of us are on just to pay down their debt burden.

Our system is broken. This is just another way that it is broken.

[sam11111]

8. 250 000 debt on income of 130 000 while cost of living just 50 000

No problem.

Live on 50 k pay 80 000k/yr
Of debt

All paid in three years. plus a few months.

Malpractice insurance? Add a year then. Office? Add another.

Total paid five Yrs.

They are mostly greedheads who have overrun our system. Time to nationalize and fix wages at 50 000/yr. ONLY that will get greedheads out.

Sweden's wages show how.

[sam11111]

7. $10,000/yr - avg Swedish dr income about 1990

They don't have to live like royalty

Their attitude is-
"Sloppy with a snarl...and a gougue thru your wallet"

So many scandals...a hospital here is just a crime scene.

As to med sch debt...small compared to incomes..look at the lifestyle lived while paying school debt. Disgusting. They prey on the desperate.

[Merlot]

9. I see this as another "us vs them" scenario

Now we're supposed to hate doctors? really?

The idea of doctors and hospitals being profit centers is a symptom of our society which has been overtaken by corporations. My feeling is that many doctors (even the most arrogant) would prefer a system where they can go about the business of healing people without worrying about the costs.

[natrlron]

10. No, this isn't

an us v them scenario. I don't, and one shouldn't, hate doctors. This is about how the for-profit system does not work well for the healing profession. The laws need to be changed so that it is all not-for-profit, and then the doctors can do as you say they would prefer doing ... just do their work and heal people without worrying about how much profit the organization is making.

[xchrom]

11. they're going to have to make medical school a good deal less expensive if we

don't want them concerned about the bottom line.