The AMA “lobby” is so bogus. If they were so great, I’d be making more money, not insurance companies and drug companies.

All of the people who want no crenetailling… you should have to take care of the sick ones who end up in the hospital because they ignored their doctor and decided to take Gingko or see their Chinese herbalist. Remember Suzanne Sommers??? She snuck in the back of her Oncologist, claiming to be doing “herbal cures”.

I spent 3 yrs in a residency, working 110 hour weeks, saving people who were sick as dogs. Yet I’m just a mechanic.

Patients are ungrateful.

~Criminallopath~

~Criminallopath~

This is the only poster on KevinMD that I can identify even when he is anonymous becuase he brings up the same tired points that have been disproven over and over again.

Are you listening criminallopath. People have already schooled you about your “Flexner Report Theory” that you so adamantly love! They can’t go around to every thread and write the same reply. Just because you say it over and over does not make it so!

Isn’t it funny that I can identify you when you are anonymous, but you cannot identify me when I am anonymous?

IDIOT. The credentialization of medicine got going strong with the Flexner report–its author Abraham flexner, it is now widely acknowledged,was a pawn of the AMA. Curiously, it was authored in 1910–at a time at which (pre-antibiotics) “university trained” physicians certainly did as much harm as they did good.

“Having a good reputation is what builds your practice. . . . You don’t seem to understand the world of medical practice from the inside, but that is how it works.”

AGain, you’re an idiot. It is very difficult to gain useful information about physician performance. Why? could it be because it’s a protective guild? Consider the National Practitioner Data Bank–the AMA does everything possible to keep it secret. Dirty monopolists . . . may they all burn in Ricardian hell.

“Legislatures have felt the commitment procedures belong to authorities in the communities as well as to judges. Why do you presume to second-guess that?”

Uhh . . . I guess you never heard of special interest lobbying.

And, finally, just in case you want to know what doctors really think of laymen:

“That presumes a degree of information transparency, education and rational thought processes that has never existed in recorded human history.”

I believe that human beings can make the right choices for themselves. I’m on the side of Jefferson, Smith, and Locke–why are doctors on the side of Stalin, Mao, and Sweden circa 1970?

Letting anyone become the doctor was possible once. The present system of university-based education and hospital training is the developed response to the screaming failure that preceded
it. But you pine for that anyway. Pine alone, please.

>>”Rather than have weirdos like Dr. Leap go on, Rodney Dangerfieldesque, about all the respect he needs, let those doctors with proven trackrecords get the respect, and the lessers work at redicares.”

That is what the system today is supposed to provide. Having a good reputation is what builds your practice. The doctorate is the prerequesite, but is far from sufficient. You actually do have to depend on what people have to say about you, and (surprise), that depends on how good a job you do. You don’t seem to understand the world of medical practice from the inside, but that is how it works.

>>”let prescription become a personal matter (as it is in most countries of the world). “

Since when has it been anything else but a “personal matter,” here or anywhere?

>>”Tax antibiotics to limit their negative externalities.”

What? And how exactly would that work? And why antibiotics but not analgesics or allergy medicines or antidepressants?

>>” Give judges and judges alone the power to commit.

Seems like a personal gripe. Judges already have the right to commit. They also have a right to overturn or truncate temporary mental health detention procedures that many states confer on licensed medical doctors, psychologists, counselors, police officers and social workers. I don’t see a groundswell of support to change this anywhere. Legislatures have felt the commitment procedures belong to authorities in the communities as well as to judges. Why do you presume to second-guess that?

>>”And let the market sort it all out.”

Wishful thinking. That presumes a degree of information transparency, education and rational thought processes that has never existed in recorded human history.

>>”It certainly couldn’t be worse than our current system.”

Sure it could. There are lots of things worse than our present system.