A response

The health care crisis CANNOT be blamed entirely on doctors.  Sorry.  Period.  No way.

We do take the Hippocratic oath.  We don't take the original form, true, but then that hasn't been standard for a century or so. And so we do harm people every day (kind of necessary for most things).  However, as it's taught in every medical school in the US (and probably in the world...), non-malfeasance is the balance between risk and benefit of a particular medical decision. The problem is that not everyone may agree which risks outweigh which benefits, which is where the issue of communication between doctors and patients comes into play. And incidentally, most malpractice lawsuits come about when that communication breaks down.

So the issue is not that there are thousands of doctors running around intentionally hurting people, leading to lawsuits, and thereby destroying the health care system (which is another topic entirely, and not fit for one blog post).  The issue is that, despite patients thinking we should all be paragons of caring and intelligence, we're only humans who make mistakes all the time.  And because most of us are fairly caring and fairly intelligent, we've ended up in this profession, instead of one where the mistakes we made wouldn't physically hurt people.  Like the majority of the population.  Yeah, if you're a bad teacher, you're gonna screw up my kid's education, but you don't see people getting sued for that (A. Because apparently we don't care about our children's education. B. Because teachers have no money.  Unlike doctors. Because of A.  It's a vicious cycle, you see.). When you make a mistake, someone's feelings get hurt, or someone gets mad because you charged them too much for their electric bill, or a dish breaks.

My life: you could hurt someone and they could die. But no pressure.  Oh, and you're liable for the decisions you make starting in medical school.  When you're $100,000 in debt.  Which is, incidentally, why you won't get sued (Read: because lawyers don't want to sue you, you have no money, what would be the point?).  But never fear, once you have something worth taking away, someone will try to take it.  Whether or not you did anything wrong.  It's okay, people don't mind going to doctors who've been sued. Your career (and the dozen  or so years you worked so hard to get it) probably won't be in any danger.  On second thought, maybe you should reconsider and become a plumber.  Your life might be less...well, you can fill in the blank.

I'm not saying malpractice lawsuits are bad.  They help ensure that the really bad doctors get taken out of circulation, as it were.  But so many malpractice suits are just plain frivolous, just like a lot of lawsuits (with apologies to my sister, Student of Law).  There are people leaving the medical profession everywhere.  Men and women who were dedicated to their patients, who were committed to their paths.  But who won't accept the bureaucratic busywork that you have to deal with just to take care of one darned patient.  A few people out of many make really bad mistakes.  The rest of us AND THE PATIENTS are having to pay. Literally.  Hence = crisis.

I guess the solution is to have robot doctors, who follow a standard protocol with every single patient, regardless of individuality.  They wouldn't be capable of mistakes.  Let's try it, and see how happy that makes everyone.  As long as mine looks like Wally, I won't complain too loudly.