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From: [email protected] (Vinay Rao)
Subject: Perception of doctors and health care
The following article by columnist Mike Royko is his humorous commentary
on some of the public's perception of doctors and their salaries.
I hope some of you will find it as amusing as I did.
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[Reprinted w/o permission]
"There's no cure for stupidity of poll on doctors' salaries"
By Mike Royko
Tribune Media Services
On a stupidity scale, a recent poll about doctors' earnings
is right up there. It almost scored a perfect brain-dead 10.
It was commissioned by some whiny consumers group called
Families USA.
The poll tells us that the majority of Americans believe
that doctors make too much money.
The pollsters also asked what a fair income would be for
physicians. Those polled said, oh, about $80,000 a year would be
OK.
How generous. How sporting. How stupid.
Why is this poll stupid? Because it is based on resentment
and envy, two emotions that ran hot during the political campaign
and are still simmering.
You could conduct the same kind of poll about any group that
earns $100,000-plus and get the same results. Since the majority
of Americans don't make those bucks, they assume that those who
do are stealing it from them.
Maybe the Berlin Wall came down, but don't kid yourself.
Karl Marx lives.
It's also stupid because it didn't ask key questions, such
as: Do you know how much education and training it takes to
become a physician?
If those polled said no, they didn't know, then they should
have been disqualified. If they gave the wrong answers, they
should have been dropped. What good are their views on how much
a doctor should earn if they don't know what it takes to become a
doctor?
Or maybe a question should have been phrased this way: "How
much should a person earn if he or she must (a) get excellent
grades and a fine educational foundation in high school in order
to (b) be accepted by a good college and spend four years taking
courses heavy in math, physics, chemistry, and other lab work and
maintain a 3.5 average or better, and (c) spend four more years
of grinding study in medical school, with the third and fourth
years in clinical training, working 80 to 100 hours a week, and
(d) spend another year as a low-pay, hard-work intern, and (e)
put in another three to 10 years of post-graduate training,
depending on your specialty and (f) maybe wind up $100,000 in
debt after medical school and (g) then work an average of 60
hours a week, with many family doctors putting in 70 hours or
more until they retire or fall over?"
As you have probably guessed by now, I have considerably
more respect for doctors than does the law firm of Clinton and
Clinton, and all the lawyers and insurance executives they have
called together to remake America's health care.
Based on what doctors contribute to society, they are far
more useful than the power-happy, ego-tripping, program-spewing,
social tinkerers who will probably give us a medical plan that is
to health what Clinton's first budget is to frugality.
But propaganda works. And, as the stupid poll indicates,
many Americans wrongly believe that profiteering doctors are the
major cause of high medical costs.
Of course doctors are well-compensated. They should be.
Americans now live longer than ever. But who is responsible for
our longevity--lawyers, Congress, or the guy flipping burgers in
a McDonald's?
And the doctors prolong our lives despite our having become
a nation of self-indulgent, lard-butted, TV-gaping couch
cabbages.
Ah, that is not something you heard President Clinton or
Super Spouse talk about during the campaign or since. But
instead of trying to turn the medical profession into a villain,
they might have been more honest if they had said:
"Let us talk about medical care and one of the biggest
problems we have. That problem is you, my fellow American. Yes,
you, eating too much and eating the wrong foods; many of you
guzzling too much hooch; still puffing away at $2.50 a pack;
getting your daily exercise by lumbering from the fridge to the
microwave to the couch; doing dope and bringing crack babies into
the world; filling the big city emergency rooms with gunshot
victims; engaging in unsafe sex and catching a deadly disease
while blaming the world for not finding an instant cure.
"You and your habits, not the doctors, are the single
biggest health problem in this country. If anything, it is
amazing that the docs keep you alive as long as they do.
"In fact, I don't understand how they can stand looking at
your blubbery bods all day.
"So as your president, I call upon you to stop whining and
start living cleanly. Now I must go get myself a triple cheesy-
greasy with double fries. Do as I say, not as I do."
But for those who truly believe that doctors are overpaid,
there is another solution: Don't use them.
That's right. You don't feel well? Then try one of those
spine poppers, needle twirlers, or have Rev. Bubba lay his hands
upon your head and declare you fit.
Or there is the do-it-yourself approach. You have chest
pains? Then sit in front of a mirror, make a slit here, a slit
there, and pop in a couple of valves.
You're going to have a kid? Why throw your money at that
overpaid sawbones so he can buy a better car and a bigger house
than you will ever have (while paying more in taxes and
malpractice insurance than you will ever earn)?
Just have the kid the old-fashioned way. Squat and do it.
And if it survives, you can go to the library and find a book on
how to give it its shots.
By the way, has anyone ever done a poll on how much
pollsters should earn?
Royko is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for Tribune Media
Services.
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Vinay J. Rao [email protected]
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