Comments on: Bottom Line Vs. Hippocratic Oath

By: John Smith

John Smith — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:03:52 +0000

Just remember folks…if you are a majority in the town I live in (and in this case, the minority around here is white), then you will be screwed!! Don’t get me started about not being a citizen, because many in this majority are!

“F” it all!

By: lanikai

lanikai — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:49:44 +0000

Yes, I would work for free in those cases. Pro bono…there is even a name for it. Every individual in the “system” makes choices. That surgeon’s was dead wrong.

By: Elliot Lake

Elliot Lake — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:27:11 +0000

Ugh. And damn. My late stepfather was a gp & surgeon, and he never turned anyone away who needed help. He gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid care over his lifetime, to people who had bad insurance or no money. No, he did not become rich, but that was not why he became a doctor. Yes he complained about the miserly behavior of insurance companies—especially after trying to get them to cover such refused items as an emergency tracheotomy.
But he never turned anyone away, he would have had harsh and foul language for any doctor refusing care like that.
So I am not in favor of letting doctors off the hook in this situation simply because we have an incredibly stupid financial system for our healthcare now. You don’t want to get up in the night to care for someone who is suffering, be a dermatologist, or be a pathologist–or a librarian. Don’t piss on your oath. And don’t hide behind the insurance companies and our (cruel and unfair) health care system.

By: DBK

DBK — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:59:23 +0000

This is the medical system we have. It reminds me of the scene from Godfather II:
“There was this kid I grew up with; he was younger than me. Sorta looked up to me, you know. We did our first work together, worked our way out of the street. Things were good, we made the most of it. During Prohibition, we ran molasses into Canada… made a fortune, your father, too. As much as anyone, I loved him and trusted him. Later on he had an idea to build a city out of a desert stop-over for GI’s on the way to the West Coast. That kid’s name was Moe Greene, and the city he invented was Las Vegas. This was a great man, a man of vision and guts. And there isn’t even a plaque, or a signpost or a statue of him in that town! Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn’t angry; I knew Moe, I knew he was head-strong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we’ve chosen; I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!”

What’s the connection? It’s the flatness. The coldness. The refusal to allow a human aspect of a very human situation, the murder of a friend, interfere with the business. That’s our medical system. It’s about money. We made a system that is about caring for sick and injured people into a system that is all about getting paid. And don’t get me wrong. Doctors, nurses, they all deserve to get paid and need to get paid, and they need and deserve to be paid well. Nurses are under-paid as it is. But this is the system we’ve chosen; don’t ask who refused to give treatment, because it has nothing to do with business.

And this is why we need universal single payer health care. Because medicine shouldn’t be conducted like the Mafia conducts business.