Larry Blanchard wrote:
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.

Or maybe he just doesn't care much about cars. The CEO of Word
Perfect used to ride around in a clapped out 20 year old pickup truck
until the marketing guys got it across to him that people seeing him
in that though that the company was in trouble and he got some kind of
shiny new econobox to go to work in.

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.

Cost me a thousand bucks at the emergency room to get four stitches
the other day. I don't think anybody was profiteering though--most of
that was "emergency room charge", which I understand is a kind of tax
(imposed by the hospital, not the government) on those who can pay to
cover the costs for those who can't, since the ER is required by law
to take all comers regardless of financial situation. The doctor's
fee was something like a hundred bucks.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)