Suffering Through Health Care

As many of them do these days, the idea for this posting came from an article I read in the Toledo Blade. This one, dated August 24th, talked about how the doctor-patient relationship is suffering in modern medical care; and why this is the fault of the insurance companies and a litigious society. 

I might be willing to give them some slack on the concept of medical lawsuits, as the only profession committing more a more egregious abuse of power than the doctors is lawyers. As for the rest, I have a few things to say on the subject. (Big surprise, huh?) 

Doctors tell us that they don't like being second guessed by the insurance companies. I can tell you that many likewise don't like questions from the patient or the family of the patient either. Society's recent creation of individuals who live for self-esteem has produced a group of doctors of almost unparalleled arrogance. If you question the tests being run, the number of prescriptions being written, or the standard of health being used as a guideline you are labeled as misguided, uninformed, or simply stupid. 

How dare anyone question the mighty medical professional in the performance of their duties! While we are on the subject of tests and prescriptions, does anyone believe that the never-ending gobstopper of tests being performed on each and every patient these days is contributing to the spiraling costs of medical care? 

Before any doctor will venture a guess about treatment, they ask for more tests than the combined number of exams that they took during medical school. This has us paying not only the hospital costs for the tests themselves, but the lab costs to process results from the bodily fluids and pictures taken and the follow up doctor's visits to discuss these endless reports. 

And what is done with the results of all of this modern scientific testing? The physician inevitably treats the test results instead of the patient. The goal becomes an experiment to produce a certifiably healthy person through the achievement of pre-approved test values. If the tests don't produce the desired result, change the parameters of the experiment through a different combination of chemicals, and retest. 

Lost however in this example of modern scientific medicine is the quality of life of the lab rat (I mean patient) who must submit to such endless experimentation without complaint or question. Let's not take out the profit motive either. What happens to the doctor-patient relationship when the person we normally deal with is not our doctor? We now rarely see those professionals, as a great deal of the work is done by nurses, nurse practitioners, and physician's assistants. 

All of these folks may have our best interest at heart, but let's be honest enough to say that it also facilitates the ability of a medical practitioner to run many more bodies through a version of assembly line medicine. Every caregiver does their part while moving the patient down the line, with the doctor doing periodic quality checks and consultation. While I would like to say that this helps provide greater care, I suspect that it might have more to do with producing better cost efficiencies and a greater revenue to patient ratio. 

Now in fairness to practitioners of the medical profession, they are not the only people exhibiting greed in this industry. Insurance companies are corporations, and as such operate on the profit motive. They do everything that they can to deliver less for the premiums paid in order to maximize their own profits. The relative health of those paying the premiums means no more to them than the people buying gas mean to Exxon. Pharmaceutical companies follow a similar corporate path, with the additional questionable practice of enlisting doctors into their misbehavior. Free samples, medical conferences in exotic locales, and experimental research sponsorships all skate a fine line (and often cross it) in the relationship between doctors and patients. 

And what shining example do these corporations have model themselves on, why the Federal Government. This model of management efficiency, limited bureaucracy, and fiscal responsibility all but insures that abuse of the system (and the patient) will be the order of the day.  

As for the lawyers, they are just the scavenging bottom feeders of the process. Taking a depersonalized system and the mistakes that are bound to occur with "assembly line" medicine, they simply try and turn any of the quality control issues into a winning lottery ticket. 

Oh there are real wrongs to be righted and evildoers to be brought to justice, but I fear that more often than not these situations would be better brought before "Judge Judy" than a jury or our peers who see no wrong in multi-million dollar settlements for pain and suffering. Doing so might allow a bit of common sense to intrude into the process and would certainly reduce the cost of malpractice insurance, and as such, on medical care itself. 

But listen, if the medical profession thinks that it's difficult to deal with insurance companies while trying to do the best job that they can for their patients, if they think that the paperwork and regulations are constricting and overwhelming now, if they think that they have seen what life can be like when dealing with an unfeeling and uncaring bureaucracy; just wait and see what happens if we get "National Health Care" and the government takes over. 

All of this discussion of the current state of medicine is making me feel a little woozy. I think that I'm going to go lie down.