On The Occasion of Ronald Reagan's 100th: Still Looking For That Shining City On The Hill

I don't "worship" Ronald Reagan . . . or "misremember" him (don't ya just love how the deep-blues in our local blagosphere revel in dissing concepts associated with Faith or inferring mental defect).  But I do miss him.

For you see, once upon a time, when I was younger, naive and very foolish, I believed in that shining city on the hill.

I graduated from Asheboro High School in 1980.  Regan "ruled" during my time in college, and part of medical school. 

I graduated to public service in the era of Bill & Hill Clinton. 

And the rest is history.

Yesterday, there was a story in the News & Observer about the battle between UNC-Hospitals and Aetna Insurance.  The headline read, "8000 Patients Left In The Lurch".  It is actually a re-play of the ugly spat between NC Baptist Hospital and Blue-Cross-Blue-Shield of North Carolina several years back that left this patient in the lurch - delaying a second round of sinus surgery (the first round having been botched at Randolph Hospital) for a year.

Some of the comments turned my stomach . . . as a dispute between a hospital and an insurance company is always a rosy opportunity for a kept-in-the-dark public to bash the doctors who have virtually NOTHING to do with the fiscal decision-making amongst the monster non-profits and those third parties that feed the monsters.  Yeah, baby.  Peace out.  Single payer/"universal coverage" is the answer.  Obamacare will solve all of our problems.  Never mind that it clearly hasn't. 

I dropped a comment.  Someone drinking the blue Koolaid, going by the fake moniker of "Perchance", responded (everyone is so courageous under their fake monikers).  And I fired off another round (the N&O's thought police had to moderate it first).

For the entertainment of Housecalls' readers:

Hi Ya'll. "Greedy doctor" here.

First, a few years back, BOC (before Obamacare), Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC and NC Baptist Hospital had the same kind of falling out. I had to wait a year for much-needed surgery while they fought it out, kissed and made up. This ain't the first time this has happened and it won't be the last - until the American public is willing to talk about what it's going to take for REAL healthcare reform.

"Single-payer for all" is utter non-sense. Medicaid is a mess as it is - laden with fraud and abuse. Moreover, medicine costs money. Bright shiny hospitals cost money. Research costs money. "Single payer" is unsustainable - especially in the current "everything goes", no limits, no responsibilities, sue-happy environment.

If you want the best & brightest to continue to sacrifice their twenties and thirties to glorified indentured servitude in return for a medical career, you're going to need to be willing to pay/reward them for their trouble, their time and their skills. I know Pediatricians who make less than plumbers . . . several who have gone BANKRUPT trying to "serve" their patients. It's ABSURD.

Speaking of that, as a young person, I swallowed all of medical hype hook, line and sinker. I went into public service to pay off my loans - in my own hometown no less. I put up with three years of GARBAGE from greedy, over-paid, over-rated, small-town, non-profit hospital executives . . . eventually being put in the position of having to choose (one night in the middle of the night while all of them were in bed) between their threats/my job and a baby's life.

I chose to help the patient (saving her life) and the rest is history. My life as I knew it - the life I had worked FOR YEARS to build - was DESTROYED. And THEN, I got dragged through the coals for telling the truth about what happened . . . SLAPP-sued . . . and then swindled at settlement (in my favor) by PERJURY, Contempt and Fraud.

NO ONE HAS GIVEN A RAT'S TAIL. Not the state or federal governments I served, not law enforcement, not the press and most certainly not the public.

I'm a "rich" doctor and I can just "get over it" and "move on".

The government (DHHS/the IRS) couldn't oversee/manage its way out of a wet paper bag in my itty bitty case - and I am a doctor. There is NO WAY things are going to get better for patients with Obamacare. It did not FIX what needed to be fixed. Not even close. Nobody is willing to have the hard conversations.

I ask you. Just how much are good conscientious doctors supposed to BLEED? Please tell me.

YOU GET WHAT YOU CONDONE WITH YOUR APATHY AND SILENCE.

Enter "Perchance"

I certainly don't think a physician should be held hostage to a system that treats him with disrespect and does not properly reward his efforts.

What once were public hospitals overseen by administrators are now, thanks to lobbying by those who benefit most from the change, now are non-profit corporations overseen by presidents whose pay has continually risen to correspond to the CEOs of overpaid executives in private industry. Nothing has changed but the titles. Also, the public non-profits in many cases are controlled by self-perpetuating boards of directors. No longer do taxpayers who paid for these hospitals have any say in their operation.

If doctors sacrifice to gain the education required to pursue their profession, that is their choice. It is the kind of choice made by teachers and other professionals who enter vocations that are not adequately appreciated and compensated. Except that the average salary of doctors, other than general practitioners, are sufficient to put them in the upper 5% income bracket. (In some countries doctors are paid on a scale equal to engineers and physicists and in rare instances about the same as taxi drivers.)

Your comments about the inefficiency of government is true in some instances. It is also true that it manages to provide marvelous infrastructure and services that are essential for a modern society.

I don't think you are so prescient as to tell us what the results of universal health care will be. What we do know is that millions of Americans are now able to receive insurance coverage who otherwise would be exposed to serious danger from disease and misfortune. We also know that all industrial nations in the world, except the U.S., offer some form of universal health coverage, most of them with a record of success.

I regret that you were the wrongful victim of a legal dispute. There are also those who have been falsely convicted in our courts and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, and even executed, but that does not mean that our entire system of justice is unfair and corrupt. With health care as with as the judicial system, the answer lies in taking a reasonable, thoughtful approach to finding solutions.

"Perchance" sounded a lot like Ed Cone.  Lots of regrets.  Wishes me well.  But not willing to lend a hand - certainly not in the same sense I did to two parents and their sick baby thirteen years ago:

Perchance, first, I'd appreciate it if you'd not patronize me.

The "non-profit" executive who did me wrong and repeatedly LIED UNDER OATH in order to finish turning his screw, now makes $700,000/year. He is a pathetic, power-mongering middle-man (well-insulated, as you say, by a do-nothing, rubber-stamping mill town board-of-directors) who cannot make a decision without a consultant. He should have been fired and/or sent to prison for what he did to me alone, but in over seven years, I've not been able to get past the local DA's front door, the USELESS NC Attorney General's office tells me there's nothing it can do (never mind that I got state and Federal loan repayment - and EVERY CENT of it was poured down the drain when I was FIRED FOR SAVING A BABY'S LIFE), and our oh-so-noble press (including this newspaper) cannot take five minutes to look into a story that would blow-the-lid off a very ugly can-of-worms that would shed a whole lot of unwanted light on how medicine is really practiced in this state.

I've got news for you. The North Carolina legal system is a pathetic, uber-corrupt joke. The State Bar didn't think that lawyers suborning perjury was a big deal. And neither the Bar, nor the legislature has done anything since the Nifong debacle to fix the gaping holes that those done wrong by their precious system can fall through. I guess I wasn't executed. But my career might as well have been.

Obamacare relies heavily upon the IRS for its policing of healthcare. I don't know what genius came up with that idea but it's dead on arrival. For you see, several years back, I chatted up the IRS about the wrong that was done me. And guess what? I was essentially told that the "non-profit" could not lie to the government, but it could lie to me all day long without the U.S. Attorney taking an interest. As a doctor doing my duty, I was a nothing and a nobody.

So I really don't have to be "prescient" to know that patients on the wrong end of bad medicine are OUT-OF-LUCK.

I've waited 13 years for someone in government to be "reasonable" and thoughtful, and it just ain't happening. Nobody's upstairs.

My Mother is a retired first-grade teacher. I respect her former profession more than I do my own these days. But I can tell you that my Mother does not begrudge doctors the right to be compensated for their training and expertise and the sacrifice that goes with it. If you want people to endure the years of BRUTALITY they often do in order to be a doctor, there has to be a light at the end of the tunnel.

If you really want to pay the Pediatrician running the CODE BLUE on your child the equivalent of what a taxi driver makes, GOOD LUCK finding a Pediatrician.

OBTW, I won't be giving Mama any grandkids. You see, it was my choice to become a doctor. It was my choice to save the life of another woman's child. And my own life was turned into a living hell for so long that I have no idea what normal feels like. I make my living on the road (as an independent contractor - mostly to hospitals) because I was black-balled for miles around my hometown by the aforementioned $700,000/year slimeball and his "team". I don't sleep in my own bed 2/3 of the year.

I don't want to be a part of a pseudo-socialist system that rewards every manner of bad behavior and irresponsibility. I want to fix the AMERICAN system. I'm tired of standing by while productive, hardworking Peter is robbed to pay for lazy, trifling Paul. I want to see limits set. I want to see people held responsible for their own actions and behavior. I want to see whistleblower protection for doctors and nurses. I want to see peer review and tort reform. I want to see the "middle-men" of medicine held accountable for their actions - in the same way doctors are. And I want the government OUT of my business - personally and professionally speaking.

And I would REALLY like to see the liberals in this county climb down from their high-minded towers and LOOK at reality. Because it DID NOT HAPPEN prior to the passage of Obamacare.

Like I said.  When I came home to Asheboro, hoping to build my future, I did not find the shining city on the hill.  I found a mill town ruled by a bunch of greedy, socially-inbred, morally-challenged miscreants (like Mike Miller and Keith Crisco and David Renfro and Bob Morrison) who fancied themselves better than the rest of the population and above any scrutiny. 

The only shine I saw was the glow from my dream burned to ashes.  And these losers ran my hometown into the ground.  Now, they want us to trust them with the clean-up.

Meanwhile, the fine, upstanding, uber-enlightened, social-justice-seeking, progressive liberal politicians in Raleigh and Washington on whose watch these really bad things happened to me could not have cared less.  

Ditto for their yapping little lap-dogs in the local blogosphere.

In short, they were no Ronald Reagan.