On Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:20:39 -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:

P.S. Given the option, would you rather see the doctor who drives
a 1969 Ford Fairlane, or the doctor who drives a new Benz
every year? I think I'd prefer the Benz driving doc because
it signifies some level of financial achievement, and probably
some level of skill. But that's just me ...

Perhaps my point of view has been influenced by my experiences. My best
friend throughout grade school and high school came from a family of
medical professionals. One brother was a doctor, one a vet, and his
sister was a pharmacist. His father was the first licensed physician in
the state.

All of them considered medicine a calling, not a business. The doctor
brother came out of med school and went to work in Appalachia. He
chuckled as he told stories of being paid in corn, chickens, and
occasionally moonshine.

My doctor sometime later had given up a lucrative practice in Chicago and
moved to a little town near the Wisconsin border because he couldn't stand
the way he was starting to treat medicine as a business.

So I'll at least check out the doc in the Ford to see why he's driving it.
He may be a drinker, a gambler, a loser in a malpractice suit, or he may
just be my kind of doctor.

So while I know we'll never agree, I'll continue to believe that getting
rich off the miseries of others is, if not downright immoral, certainly
distasteful. When medicine became a "business" instead of a "calling" we
all became poorer.