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In Britain’s Liverpool Pathway We Get A Preview Of Obmacare And Hell

By: streiff (Diary)  |  October 20th, 2012 at 08:18 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
Hubert H. Humphrey

It isn’t often that I open a story with a quote from a liberal but, as a Catholic, I have a great deal of affinity for Hubert Humphrey. As you read this you’ll see just how far the modern left has strayed from the liberalism of FDR, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.
Let’s stipulate in the beginning that modern medicine is a business. You don’t have a kindly doctor showing up at your home at 2am to treat a sick child and accept labor or chickens in return. Our hospitals are run by hard edged MBAs. Within the profession we’ve exchanged the kind and compassionate Dr. Ben Casey for the arrogant and abusive Dr. Greg House who knows best and your wishes be damned as the operating model.

As the saying goes, the difference between God and a doctor is that God doesn’t think he’s a doctor.
It is well known that about 30% of medical expenditures occur in the last year of life. I view this a tautological dodge because you usually don’t need a lot of medical care until you are near death and as no one knows which is the last year of their life it is a pretty useless metric… unless you can designate with certainty the last year of a patient’s life and then set out to minimize costs during that period.
Enter the Liverpool Care Pathway for the dying patient courtesy of the British National Health Service.

In the first stage of the pathway, the multi-professional team caring for the patient have to agree that all reversible causes for the patient’s conditions have been considered and that the patient is in fact dying. The assessment then makes suggestions for what palliative care options to consider and whether non-essential treatments and medications should be discontinued. However, the pathway is not a “one-way-street” and if no further deterioration of the patient’s condition occurs, pathway-based palliative care is halted and all previous treatments are resumed. This occurs for about 3% of patients put on the pathway. The pathway recommends that the carers assess how well the patient can communicate and talk to their family, to check that they understand what is happening and see if their religious and spiritual needs are being addressed. The carers are also expected to discuss the plan of care with the patient and their family.

The programme provides suggestions for treatments to manage any pain, agitation, respiratory tract secretions, nausea and vomiting, or shortness of breath (dyspnoea) that the patient may experience] Staff are pre-authorised to give such interventions as required without further authorisation, usually by subcutaneous injection, so that symptoms can be addressed as soon as needed, without further delay.

On the surface the Pathway looks like a rational way of dealing with patients at the end of life, when comfort is of more use than medical care and a competent patient is under no obligation to accept extraordinary measures to prolong life. Pope John Paul II, himself, decided to decline heroic methods to extend his life when it became obvious that he would not recover. The operative terms here are “competent” and “accept.”

In practice it is an entirely different set of facts. It is a roach-motel for patients deemed to have a terminal condition. They check in but they don’t check out.

Because the Liverpool Pathway is set up to ration care and minimize costs in that last year of life, there are perverse incentives. Primary among them is to aggressively identify patients who aren’t quite terminal and help them out a bit. As we know, when men start assuming the role of God, very little good comes out of it.

An elderly woman died alone after doctors failed to tell relatives they were ending her life on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway.
Olive Goom, 85, passed away with no one by her side after medics neglected to consult with her family about her treatment at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
…
As Miss Goom lay dying alone, staff reassured relatives on the phone just hours before her death that there was no urgent need to visit – even though doctors had already removed tubes providing vital food and fluids.

Her family discovered that she had died only when her niece went to visit her and found she was already being prepared for the mortuary. They said last night that they will never be able to stop feeling guilty that no one was there in her final hours.

This type of misadventure seems to be much more the norm than anyone would like to believe as the Liverpool Care Pathway has become an assembly line of death rather than a hospice-like terminal care program.

NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.

Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.

He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country.
…

It can include withdrawal of treatment – including the provision of water and nourishment by tube – and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.

There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP [My emphasis].

Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’.

He cited ‘pressure on beds and difficulty with nursing confused or difficult-to-manage elderly patients’ as factors.

More tragic is that are those instances in which the patients selected to die really aren’t terminal.

Mrs Fenton, from East Sussex, is still alive and “happy” nine months after doctors declared she would only survive for days, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding, her daughter, Christine Ball, said.
…
Mrs Fenton was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia. Although Mrs Ball acknowledged that her mother was very ill she was “astonished” when a junior doctor told her she was going to be placed on the plan to “make her more comfortable” in her last days.

On Jan 19, Mrs Fenton’s 80th birthday, Mrs Ball said her mother had lost “an awful lot of weight” but was feeling better, and told her she “didn’t want to die”.

But it took another four days to persuade doctors to give her artificial feeding, Miss Ball said.

Mrs Ball said the fight to save her mother had been made harder by the Mental Capacity Act. “I was told that we had no rights, and food and hydration were classed as treatment, which meant they had the right to withhold feeding. It gave a doctor the power to play god with my mother’s life,” she said.

Mrs Fenton is now being looked after in a nursing home near her daughter’s home.

One can only guess at the number of survivable cases there are among the 130,000 Britons currently in a hospital and marked for death.

So this system really sucks. If you are interested there is a grassroots rebellion going oni in Britain against this appalling system check out this website.  But what does it mean here?

Under Obamacare we are on the glidepath to a similar progam being adopted here . For all those who derided Sarah Palin and the “death panels” she was absolutely right. Now a former senior official in the Obama regime has come out in favor of a system modeled on the Liverpool Care Pathway.

 No one wants to lose an aging parent. And with price out of the equation, it’s natural for patients and their families to try every treatment, regardless of expense or efficacy. But that imposes an enormous societal cost that few other nations have been willing to bear. Many countries whose health care systems are regularly extolled — including Canada, Australia and New Zealand — have systems for rationing care.

Take Britain, which provides universal coverage with spending at proportionately almost half of American levels. Its National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence uses a complex quality-adjusted life year system to put an explicit value (up to about $48,000 per year) on a treatment’s ability to extend life.

At the least, the Independent Payment Advisory Board should be allowed to offer changes in services and costs. We may shrink from such stomach-wrenching choices, but they are inescapable.

As we delegate more and more responsibility for our medical care to the government, the government will increase its authority over the type and amount of care that we can receive. Why we think a government panel will be more successful at deciding who lives and who dies than a government panel making investment decisions in solar panels or electric cars escapes me.

A system that arguably started out as a humane system in Britain to ease the final days of the terminally ill has devolved into a financially driven program focused on eliminating patients to save money and reduce occupancy rates.

What makes this more unfathomable, and truly accentuates Pope John Paul II’s various sermons against what he termed the Culture of Death, is that the liberal left, that part of our political spectrum which touts itself as compassionate and caring, is the most aggressive in offing those who Hubert Humphrey said were in the dawn and dusk of life: the unborn and the physically infirm. Apparently their interest in those in the shadows only extends to the extent to which they can be inveigled to vote for Democrat politicians.

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  • http://hehasfailed.wordpress.com/ HopeHeFails

    No doubt a preview of the coming Obamacare bureaucracy should Romney fail to get elected, though I’m not sure this same path is possible in America. The proceeds of the 2nd Amendment will likely remind Obamacare operators of what happens when the Government exceeds the limited provisions in the Constitution and when last resorts are all that are left.

  • commonsenseobserver

    But Obamacare can’t be repealed with 60 votes. We can just defund it, and hope that we’ll be able to repeal it fully before the Democrats take power again and restore it.

  • streiff

    That type of commentary is completely out of bounds on this site. Don’t ever post anything that implies advocating violence again. This is not a discussion.

  • http://hehasfailed.wordpress.com/ HopeHeFails

    I’m not advocating violence nor do I own any type of weapon, but many people do. I’m discussing the reality of what will likely happen when the Government chooses who lives and dies, and that American’s response to suppression will likely be different than that of other countries who have no second amendment.

  • streiff

    Did you not read the “this is not a discussion” part? Because you bickering with the wrong guy.

  • floridaveteran

    Since the SC ruled Obamacare is a tax it can be repealed with 51 votes under the budget authority act.

  • floridaveteran

    I think you are wrong in this matter. What HopeHeFails is discussion is the:

    The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

    IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

    The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

    When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
    people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with
    another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and
    equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle
    them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
    should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
    equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
    Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
    Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
    among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
    –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
    ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
    institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
    organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
    effect their Safety and Happiness.

  • floridaveteran

    If you cannot revolt against an unjust, anti-constitutional, anti-republican government then you are a slave.

  • commonsenseobserver

    Only the individual mandate and other fiscal provisions. But the Medicare cuts will stay, and many other regulations.

  • streiff

    if you mention the Second Amendment on this site in terms of armed revolt you are banned. This is a long standing policy here and I’ll ban as many people as it takes to show that I’m serious.

  • lineholder

    You’re correct that the ruling from SCOTUS was in consideration of the individual mandate. As to the remainder of the law, it is possible to utilize the “Secretary shall determine” provisions for something other than what the Dems have intended. If it turns out that the law isn’t repealed in its entirety, then this will be the best option we have.

  • lineholder

    This path is not only possible. It is highly likely. Second amendment or not. The foundation has already been established to put the economic squeeze on physicians and health care organizations. If providers do not comply, they go out of business or stand at risk of being “bailed out” by the government “for the sake of the public welfare”.

  • floridaveteran

    The entire bill is subject to the budget authority act because it is ONE bill.

  • http://hehasfailed.wordpress.com/ HopeHeFails

    Obama has set a precedent of ‘court shopping’ when done enough times yields the desired outcome.

    Additionally, many challenges to Obamacare will be filed the day other Obamacare provisions go into effect and standing is created… SCOTUS has signaled they expect these new challenges and that some of them may nullify Obamacare in the process.

  • floridaveteran

    I referenced the US Declaration of Independence! Is that a subject that is banned from this cite as well? Which parts of the Declaration and the US Constitution are appropriate discussion materials?

  • 4hhy

    This information would be Tragic if this Life is All there “IS” This mite burst someones Bubble . Galatians 6:7 Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Think getting the same Treatment in Return, difference is its ETERNAL, by the Lord most Vehement. Back Up YHEL AF Liberator/Terminator http://truth-revealed.name.
    Not to Smart
    Matthew 18:721st Century King James Version (KJ21)7 “Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must happen that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.

  • lineholder

    Even if that occurs, it won’t necessarily undo the damage that is already being done within the health care industry. That’s why utilization of the “Secretary shall determine” provisions could actually be a viable way of making changes.

  • streiff

    parts that can be construed as advocating violence. I know you’re smart enough to figure that out and move on. If not, that’s fine, too.

  • littlehouse18

    Not to mention the indoctrination going on in the medical schools and likely the general population regarding this issue.

  • lineholder

    Liverpool Care Pathway is a hideous program. One of the dangers of implementing a universal health care system (aside from the risk that government will misuse and abuse power that it gains) is that it can lead to a relationship between the government and health care providers that could be described as a rather perverse version of Stockholm Syndrome. Providers become loyal to the system under the authority of government rather than to practicing medicine in a manner that actually helps heal the sick.

    Such is the case with Liverpool Care Pathway. I’m glad to see that Great Britain has a few people left who are willing to try to send out the alarm and act as patient advocates.

  • bassethound

    Oh yes…it is indeed. Consider Jack Kervorkian, and how many people he killed before they finally put him in prison. The vast majority of his “clients” were women, and were NOT terminal.

  • Bill S

    You’re not very bright, are you? Pay attention to the moderator’s instructions and you might get to comment another day.

  • PaladinLostHour

    @floridaveteran / don’t let your frustration with the polity’s temporary lapse in judgment that is the Obama administration cloud your thinking. The US is a loooooong way from the state you describe.

    The mods are looking out for the site and for you – comments like the stuff you and HopeHeFails are posting, enables the tinfoil hat crowd at the SPLC and DailyKos to lump RedState in with the bottomfeeders at VDare, American Renaissance, etc.

    If you want Redstate to remain a force in driving the larger discussion, that can’t be allowed to happen.

  • mrsemptybucket

    Sssstttrrreiffff – I am shaking with rage at the treatment towards those who are ill and possilbly at the end of their life. Used to work in a hospital where one doctor wrote a patient off it they were over 65 (this was 40) years ago. He was what might become common place if Obamacare takes our health care system completely over. To enter into a “pathway” program scares the heck out of me. Have you heard lately what Romney/Ryan are planning for Obamacare? It seems to have somewhat taken a back seat to some other issues. Even the most miserable tempermented human deserves compassion and tender loving care and that includes food and water!

  • teapartypatriot4ever

    Liberal progressives, aka socialist marxists, do not view human beings, aka human life as priceless.. They view human beings / human life as something to be defined as useful property.. either you useful to the State, or you are not.. thus if you are not, ie; particularly in the last days of your life, you are not afforded the care- ie; denied the care of service that could save and extend one’s life. Conservatives are religious, compassionate, humane people who believe the opposite, that human life, human beings are priceless, and to treat humans, whether in the first days of life, or last, with anything less than full humanitarian compassion, is truly a crime against humanity and all that morality embodies.

    this is why we view forced mandated State Socialized medicine, particularly if it is the only medical care available as dictated by the State, as one of tyranny, oppression, and a crime against people. But, when the people of any Nation and or society allows this to happen to them, and do nothing to stop, prevent, and or reverse such inhumane systems, then they are just as guilty as those who implement such inhumane systems.

  • renl57

    Here’s one ex-Obama Administration liberal who has admitted as much:

    September 16, 2012

    Beyond Obamacare

    By
    STEVEN RATTNER

    The New York Times

    WE need death panels.

    Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating
    health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name —
    the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.

    But in the pantheon of toxic issues — the famous “third rails” of
    American politics — none stands taller than overtly acknowledging that
    elderly Americans are not entitled to every conceivable medical
    procedure or pharmaceutical….

    Medicare needs to take a cue from Willie Sutton, who reportedly said he robbed banks because that’s where the money was. The
    big money in Medicare is not to be found in Mr. Ryan’s competition or
    Mr. Obama’s innovation, but in reducing the cost of treating people in
    the last year of life, which consumes more than a quarter of the
    program’s budget.

    No one wants to lose an aging parent. And with price out of the
    equation, it’s natural for patients and their families to try every
    treatment, regardless of expense or efficacy. But that imposes an
    enormous societal cost that few other nations have been willing to bear.
    Many countries whose health care systems are regularly extolled —
    including Canada, Australia and New Zealand — have systems for rationing care.

    Take Britain, which provides universal coverage with spending at
    proportionately almost half of American levels. Its National Institute
    for Health and Clinical Excellence uses a complex quality-adjusted life
    year system to put an explicit value (up to about $48,000 per year) on a
    treatment’s ability to extend life.

    At the least, the Independent Payment Advisory Board [part of ObamaCare] should be allowed to offer changes in services and costs. We may shrink from such stomach-wrenching choices, but they are inescapable.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/opinion/health-care-reform-beyond-obamacare.html?_r=3&

  • renl57

    You’re selectively quote-mining. Read the next part of the Declaration:

    “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should
    not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
    experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while
    evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms
    to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
    usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to
    reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their
    duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their
    future security”

    We have had just ONE Administration (Obama) that has instituted several policies you don’t like. (Were you also prepared for Second Amendment action during the Bush Administration?) That’s not a casus belli for armed rebellion in this country, and it never has been.

  • renl57

    Romney has promised to issue blanket waivers to every state and every organization.

    If ObamaCare is as unpopular as the polls suggest it is, then with these blanket waivers, so many states and organizations will drop out of ObamaCare that it will become fiscally and legally unsustainable anyway.

    Like the 55 mph speed limit and the Blue Laws, it may remain on the books for some time but it will be universally flouted.

  • streiff

    I had forgotten about that. You are absolutely correct and I should have included this in the story.

  • renl57

    There is a problem there.

    If human life is priceless, then a free market in health care is equally unsupportable.

    Any free market depends on a *pricing mechanism*: The price that is paid for a service or product is the point at which the supply and demand curves intersect. A higher price might encourage more supply, but the demand wouldn’t be there. A lower price might encourage more demand, but the supply wouldn’t be there. So there reaches an equilibrium point.

    If human life is truly priceless, and the price of preserving life is infinite, then the supply-demand curves for treating life-threatening illness will never intersect. Demand will always outstrip supply. Which makes intuitive sense: Unlike buying other products and services, few people will walk out of this deal because it’s too expensive. Very few patients will say, “That treatment for my cancer is too expensive. I won’t pay it! I’d rather die.”

    Unlike buying a car, with health care for life-threatening illness, you can’t walk out of the deal even if it’s too expensive.

  • floridaveteran

    Have you forgotten the appointing of official without the consent of the Senate? These official are writing regulations that directly impact your freedom to spend your money where you wish? Have you forgotten the predators that now fly above the US monitoring US citizens? Have you forgotten Obama’s refusal to see that the laws of the US are faithfully enforced? Have you forgotten Fast and Furious?

    The it is Bush’s fault does not work. Please send me a action by Bush that violated the laws of this land. And Iraq and Afghanistan does not count because both of those actions were authorized by Congress. Guantanimo does not count because under the Geneva Convention the people in Guantanimo should have tried in the field and executed.

  • floridaveteran

    Your argument that to influence the left and other socialist I should limit by freedom of speech is unfounded.

  • commonsenseobserver

    I don’t know, No Child Left Behind? The Homeland Security Act? The PATRIOT Act?

    Don’t forget that every modern administration has been writing lots of rules, most of them probably unconstitutional if judged severely.

  • commonsenseobserver

    I don’t think the Byrd Rules works that way, sir.

  • Bill S

    Freedom of speech doesn’t apply to private property. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone we damn well please.

  • commonsenseobserver

    Yes, of course, but there’re questions about whether such blanket waivers can be granted. Obama specifically designed the law to cuddle cronies and special interests.

  • CarolT

    I read, with horror, about the Livepool Pathway after the opening ceremony for the Olympics. They let an 18 year old die of thirst. I think he was 18, he could have been older or younger by a year, but he did call the equvalent of 911 in GB and when the police arrive he was delirious from dehydration. The nurse dismissed told the police he was like that. There is something not quite right about that story, he had parents, I’m not sure why his mother didn’t see him in that condition.

    I hope MItt Romney repeals the entire thing after his inauguration. I am praying Mitt wins by a landslide.

  • cardcarryingmom

    Plain and simply, what absolutely infuriates me is that we are willing to give enormous sums of our money to despot nations who hate us and, at the same time, decide who lives and dies amongst the world’s most benevolent people-we Americans! If you “kill off” the baby boomers, then there are more resources to redistribute-sinister!

  • mannie

    Coming to tour bedside, courtesy of the Treasonous Criminal Zerobama.

  • satchman3

    I think this is a key point. In capitalism, resources are allocated according to who has the money. If you have money you can get stuff and if you don’t have money you can’t get stuff.

    I really don’t see how the insurance model will ever work without lots of intervention – it makes no sense to me for an insurance company to insure a pre-existing condition. Nobody wants to insure my damaged roof without a rider so how can my pre-existing condition get covered in a free market?

  • thx1138v2

    “As you read this you’ll see just how far the modern left has strayed from the liberalism of FDR, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.” I don’t know that much about JFK but FDR and Johnson were way belond “left”. I think of JFK as a “traditional liberal” althoug I don’t know that much about his policies. FDR

  • streiff

    I know that is what Glenn Beck says but it is largely bull. You can’t logically look at the New Deal and Great Society programs and arrive at the conclusions you do. You are free to hold them but I don’t think they bear up under any scrutiny whatsoever.

  • streiff

    what we are purchasing is really health care as part of a cooperative rather than insurance. The sooner we lose the idea of “insurance” the better off we’ll be.

  • macbookben

    You know that scene in “Soylent Green” where Edward G. Robinson’s character goes to the Euthanasia center to be turned into a biscuit? I think even that’s more humane than the Liverpool Protocol or Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board.

  • fpmd

    As a primary care MD with 20
    years of experience in Family Medicine, your description of doctors as arrogant and abusive “Greg House” types who don’t care and think they are God, is untrue. As a group, the majority care very much about the health and wellbeing of their patients. Of the 60 plus hours most of us work each week treating and caring for patients– fully 1/3 of that time is uncompensated. No, we don’t work for chickens or barter. Just
    like everyone else, we need to be paid in dollars for services rendered. Drs House and Casey are fictional characters created for entertainment. Real doctors care about their patients and sacrifice a great deal personally to provide excellent care.

    As for obamacare, it was not written by doctors or hospitals and in my opinion, it will reduce the quality of care for all patients. This will be especially true for the very young, very sick, disabled and elderly as the cost of their care will be determined too expensive. Obamacare also ends the relationship of one physician taking care of one patient. Under obamacare, the patient will
    no longer to be perceived as an individual, but an “economic unit” within a
    “population”. Under obamacare, bureaucrats will determine the treatment plan based upon best practices and economic models (your value to society compared to the cost of treatment). Doctors that do not comply with the obamacare bureaucrat ordered treatment plan will be subject to penalties. A doctor’s knowledge, years of experience and unique skill set are rendered insignificant under obamacare. None of the doctors I work with support obamacare.

  • PowerToThePeople

    If you had 20 years in the medical field, you would not have ever stated his “Dr House” description was arrogant and abusive or that it was untrue. I find it laughable that you even attempt to deny the rampant God complex amongst so many doctors not too mention the many who are arrogant, unfriendly, in it for the money (albeit I have no issue with someone being into something legal for the money), etc.The few doctors you may be around do not come anywhere close to being decent representation of the whole group and even with that fact, if you really are in medicine as you claim, I find it really hard to believe you have not ran across the very kind of doctor the author described.

    As to your hours and the claim of not being compensated, cough cough who gives a rats ass cough cough and cough cough bullsh*t cough cough. A) Every doctor in the world knew what their job detailed when they decided to become doctors so you get no sympathy from me for the amount of hours spent on the job. I knew what it would take 30 years ago when I decided to step out and go into business for myself, and I never complained and no one would have listened had I complained. And B) While many doctors work for free sometimes for charity, they are well compensated and there is no off time when it comes to collecting a check. While it is true there are some patients who do not pay and pay from insurance companies may be slow, that is all figured into the billing amount delivered to the paying patient.

    There are a ton of great doctors, caring doctors, etc, but there are just as many pricks in that field who would rather be out golfing than dealing with the person sitting in front of them or laying in front of them. One only has to look as the recent case where the doctor suffocated a couple’s son out of so called mercy to see the God complex or just look at the thousands upon thousands of doctors willing to kill the unborn to see the doc in it for the cash only.

    Blow the smoke elsewhere.

  • gayla

    For over forty years I tried to explain to doctors how coffee helped me to relax, only to be told how stupid I was and have some high powered pill with opposite than intended effects prescribed for chronic depression or whatever the disease of the day happened to be. One day I mentioned this to a friend who happened to be a psychiatrist. He laughed and said “Yep, I understand that. A classic symptom of A.D.D.” Finally I understood why that classroom window fifty years ago was so magnetic.

  • fpmd

    I graduated from Medical School in 1991, Residency in 1994 and am in private practice with 6 other physicians in the mid-west. All of the Family Practice physicians at our clinic are decent, caring human beings who are dedicated to providing quality patient care – as are the majority of physicians.
    I did not say all, I said the majority. There is no need to ridicule, demean or lecture me about my profession.

  • streiff

    do you have data to support that claim? If so, please share. If not, please comment on the story not your personal butthurt.

  • mrsemptybucket

    Thank you for being a caring and compassionate man, doctor. Perhaps you can believe me when I say it is quite possible that “the exception that proves the rule” has overtaken the medical profession and in today’s real world you may have to hunt to find a doctor such as yourself. I know that there are many, many who do care but we’ve heard too much to the contrary to believe 100% think like you do. We’ve heard too many true stories from friends, neighbors & family and have had our own experiences. One doctor who is unable to treat their patients with the dignity and care everyone deserves is one doctor too many and their are many with a very poor attitude now praciticing medicine in the U.S. I shudder to think they would be participating in a “pathway” program.
    I have never understood if doctors were so against Obamacare why didn’t they stand up and fight it. Surely the doctors have a huge lobby influence in D.C. I rarely read anything in 2009 that indicated a fight was being waged by America’s doctors. Maybe that is a naive statement, I am not politically saavy. Did you and your co-workers have a chance to fight against Obamacare?According to this article: http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2011/01/13/doctors-in-congress/ there were 18 republican doctors in Congress during the time of the Obamacare passage. Let’s hope that when Romney is President those 18 doctors will have a real voice in dumping that program and introducing real reform to our health care system along with you and your fellow doctors.

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