Much of the discussion regarding the government health care
proposals has been directed toward the prudence of the ideas.
But what about doctors and their moral rights in the
process? I took
that on in the latest Acton Commentary. Here's an
excerpt:
Imagine that you are a physician. You have made it through four
years of college on a steady diet of biology, chemistry, and
calculus, four years of medical school so demanding that you
have no life outside of school, and at least three years of
residency in which you have regularly worked 100 hours a week
for a very low salary. You have been the first to get up and
the last to go home. And somewhere in there your third decade
of life, commonly known as your "twenties" (normally a fun
time), has disappeared. Along the way, you have probably racked
up an astronomical personal debt because there is no time to
work a second job to help pay it off. The first professional
hurdle you set out to clear will be six figures accumulating
interest. Forget family. If you have a spouse at this point, he
or she is probably full of resentment at never seeing you.
After all this, have you made your way to an easy job? No. You
are likely spending four days a week seeing patients, another
day in surgery, taking a 24 hour call every four days, and
working one weekend out of every four. The only time you are
ever off is when another doctor can be found to cover your
responsibilities while you are out. The job itself is
rewarding, but incredibly difficult. You see patients and
listen to them explain their symptoms. Using your knowledge,
you have to figure out what is wrong with them and which of the
many options for treatment you should choose. If you are a
specialist who performs surgeries, you have to cut into another
human being with a blade and try to correct what is wrong
inside the body. It's stressful work.
Bad things happen in the cold rooms of the hospital. Patients
in surgery might begin to bleed so fast you have maybe five
minutes to figure out how to stop it and prevent their death.
Sometimes, you open up a patient and see that things are so bad
you can do nothing other than close them back up and give them
the awful news. And don't ever make a mistake or even appear to
have made a mistake. American medicine has been so successful
that patients have unrealistic expectations for their own
safety in the midst of inherently risky activities like cutting
a body open and manipulating vital organs. Trial lawyers feed
on those expectations to create an entire industry designed to
capitalize on apparent errors. The industry works because
jurors, who typically have no life experience or training to
help them understand the practice of medicine, can be convinced
to award giant sums to plaintiffs for errors made in some of
the most difficult work imaginable. The existence of the
malpractice bar has changed the way you practice medicine. You
have to raise prices to pay for expensive malpractice
insurance. You're induced to order excessive tests to defend
against the accusations of a litigator. You will stay up late
many nights updating patient charts and trying to make sure
every piece of documentation is complete.
Now imagine how you would feel if the rest of us got together
and proposed that the government should become the primary
client for medical services. As part of the deal, the
government will determine how much you will be paid. Lawyers,
business executives, electricians, and plumbers (to name but a
few) will all be allowed to command what the market will pay
for their services-but not you. Simply because it is possible
that a majority may be found who think this scheme is a good
idea, you may lose all the benefits of offering your services
in a free economy.
Is this situation really fair? Have your fellow citizens
honored your inherent rights and freedoms? They have not, and
this why a public option is so offensive. It represents a move
by a majority of citizens to control the economic well-being of
a person who has endured extraordinary hardship and trials in
order to become a much-needed provider of medical services.
