Maggie's Farm

The government thinks they know how to practice medicine better than we docs in the trenches do. They have no clue.

I'll admit that some of what doctors do, many expensive things, are purely defensive medicine. Lawsuits are inconvenient and no fun, but we all get sued. Most of the time, we either win or our insurers pay them to go away, but it's a major interference with our work and our mental bandwidth.

Each and every medical decision can be questioned, because it's all an individualized art requiring individualized judgements.

Here's this: An attempt to alter Medicare may let Washington dictate how doctors treat patients.

Physicians take a solemn oath to do what they believe is best for their patient. It's always a complex dance, of course, with the doctor recommending and the patient thinking about what they want.

We accommodate patients' desires all the time, even when we believe that they are wrong. It's a free country, is it not? We work for, and with, the patient. Nobody else.

I am 100% out of government medical care.