If Lawyers Are Going To Regulate Medicine...

I found this ironic, funny, and sadly true. In going back to school, I find the science people are generally more direct and precise in their words; wordy types who end up being lawyers twisters, using abject truth to fit their current need.

ObamaCare - a lawyer, twisting the words of truth to fit his own needs and encouraging this country to head down a destructive path.

In my own life, I was friends with a woman from a Canada who was battling her second round of breast cancer. Her only hope for life was to get to U.S. healthcare facilities stating that Canadian health care is deplorable at best, and deadly at its worst. She went on to say that it was not because the Canadian doctors were somehow worse than those educated in the U.S. but because the patient COULD NOT GET IN TO SEE ONE. She attributed it to the Canadian socialized medicine plan and hated it. Sadly, my friend with whom I volunteered, died. R.I.P. Shahna.

My uncle is married to a Canadian and loved living in the gorgeous province of British Columbia. Throughout his life, however, he came to the U.S. for healthcare. As his health began to fail in his mid-70s, he and his wife moved south. Again, not because the doctors themselves are somehow substandard - Canadian doctors are not - but because there simply are NOT ENOUGH doctors to treat all the patients who need help on a more immediate basis.

As President Obama moves toward socialism, I have to wonder where all these extra physicians are going to come from. Substandard undergraduate students? How about those licensed in other countries (ala Europe) who cannot pass the USMLE Step 1, 2 or 3?

And if we are going to socialize medicine, then let's socialize attorneys. Because in all honesty, the lawyers I've chosen to work with caused more stress and more mind numbing pain than any doctor visit I've ever had.

The article below was in the Wall Street Journal.

A Doctor's Plan for Legal Industry Reform
By RICHARD B. RAFAL
Since we are moving toward socialism with ObamaCare, the time has come to do the same with other professions—especially lawyers. Physician committees can decide whether lawyers are necessary in any given situation.

At a town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., last month, our uninformed lawyer in chief suggested that we physicians would rather chop off a foot than manage diabetes since we would make more money doing surgery. Then President Obama compounded his attack by claiming a doctor's reimbursement is between "$30,000" and "$50,000" for such amputations! (Actually, such surgery costs only about $1,500.)

Physicians have never been so insulted. Because of these affronts, I will gladly volunteer for the important duty of controlling and regulating lawyers. Since most of what lawyers do is repetitive boilerplate or pushing paper, physicians would have no problem dictating what is appropriate for attorneys. We physicians know much more about legal practice than lawyers do about medicine.

Following are highlights of a proposed bill authorizing the dismantling of the current framework of law practice and instituting socialized legal care:

• Contingency fees will be discouraged, and eventually outlawed, over a five-year period. This will put legal rewards back into the pockets of the deserving—the public and the aggrieved parties. Slick lawyers taking their "cut" smacks of a bookie operation. Attorneys will be permitted to keep up to 3% in contingency cases, the remainder going into a pool for poor people.

• Legal "DRGs." Each potential legal situation will be assigned a relative value, and charges limited to this amount. Program participation and acceptance of this amount is mandatory, regardless of the number of hours spent on the matter. Government schedules of flat fees for each service, analogous to medicine's Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs), will be issued. For example, any divorce will have a set fee of, say, $1,000, regardless of its simplicity or complexity. This will eliminate shady hourly billing. Niggling fees such as $2 per page photocopied or faxed would disappear. Who else nickels-and-dimes you while at the same time charging hundreds of dollars per hour? I'm surprised lawyers don't tack shipping and handling onto their bills.

• Legal "death panels." Over 75? You will not be entitled to legal care for any matter. Why waste money on those who are only going to die soon? We can decrease utilization, save money and unclog the courts simultaneously. Grandma, you're on your own.

• Ration legal care. One may need to wait months to consult an attorney. Despite a perceived legal need, physician review panels or government bureaucrats may deem advice unnecessary. Possibly one may not get representation before court dates or deadlines. But that' s tough: What do you want for "free"?

• Physician controlled legal review. This is potentially the most exciting reform, with doctors leading committees for determining the necessity of all legal procedures and the fairness of attorney fees. What a wonderful way for doctors to get even with the sharks attempting to eviscerate the practice of medicine.

• Discourage/eliminate specialization. Legal specialists with extra training and experience charge more money, contributing to increased costs of legal care, making it unaffordable for many. This reform will guarantee a selection of mediocre, unmotivated attorneys but should help slow rising legal costs. Big shot under indictment? Classified National Archives documents down your pants? Sitting president defending against impeachment? Have FBI agents found $90,000 in your freezer? Too bad. Under reform you too may have to go to the government legal shop for advice.

• Electronic legal records. We should enter the digital age and computerize and centralize legal records nationwide. All files must be in a standard, preferably inconvenient, format and must be available to government agencies. A single database of judgments, court records, client files, etc. will decrease legal expenses. Anyone with Internet access will be able to search the database, eliminating unjustifiable fees charged by law firms for supposedly proprietary information, while fostering transparency. It will enable consumers to dump their clunker attorneys and transfer records easily.

• Ban legal advertisements. Catchy phone numbers such as 1-800-LAWYERS would be seized by the government and repurposed for reporting unscrupulous attorneys.

• New government oversight. Government overhead to manage the legal system will include a cabinet secretary, commissioners, ombudsmen, auditors, assistants, czars and departments.

• Collect data about the supply of and demand for attorneys. Create a commission to study the diversity and geographic distribution of attorneys, with power to stipulate and enforce corrective actions to right imbalances. The more bureaucracy the better. One can never have too many eyes watching these sleazy sneaks.

• Lawyer Reduction Act (H.R. -3200). A self-explanatory bill that not only decreases the number of law students, but also arbitrarily removes 3,200 attorneys from practice each year. Textbook addition by subtraction.

Enthusiastically embracing the above legal changes can serve as a "teachable moment" and will go a long way toward giving the lawyers who run Congress a taste of their own medicine.

—Dr. Rafal is a radiologist in New York City.

Gunners, Snipers, & Others

Cheaters and thieves come in all forms, even med school students. What makes this especially sad, is the med school students no longer need to compete with their undergraduate, not-admitted brethren. They've already attained the holy grail of what we pre-meds are striving for.

Ideas stolen are not original and while flattering, is also rather disingenuous. Will you be like that as a doctor? I imagine so and become vilified and distrusted amongst your physician peers.

I hope you find the reason for your need to steal and thieve, run and gun. Life is short and paradoxically, long as well.

Good luck to you.

Days Like These...

First day back in almost 4 months... was I nervous? Excited? Anxious? Or none of the above? Probably a whole lot of mixed emotions were running rampant through my head without me even really recognizing it.

Biology was a bit odd. That's the word I'll use for today, "odd". Great instructor, can tell he really likes being around students (hence his various and repeated awards for outstanding instructor) but it was odd. One minute talking about protons and neutrons and why electrons are important (at least he didn't call them "proteins" as another instructor did... an enlightenment I'll save for another post) but I'm not sure why organic chair structures are needed so early in a course when organic chemistry is not a requirement. Anyway, I really like the instructor and can tell he really likes teaching. We'll see if I stick in the class as my schedule really is dependent upon chemistry at this time.

So, then onto physics. Running from the parking lot to the class nothing interesting seemed to happen. Class was completely packed so I pulled up a piece of "real estate" on the dirtied carpeting. The instructor for that class more than made up for my time being one with the floor - he's funny, incorporates real life meaning into physics material. This class is going to be awesome!!

Then to physics lab... oh, and the exam they failed to warm anyone about. My earlier posts document my overwhelming test anxiety which is being treated, as long as I know when the exam is. I tried my best to take it; I tried my best to get through the material and despite that it doesn't affect my grade in any way, the thoughts racing through my head were, "Oh no, they're going to boot me out of this class and into remedial math" and from there it went downhill fast.

Never mind that when I took the math placement test, I placed into calculus. Never mind that I more than understand sin, cos, tan, sec, cosec, and cotan. Never mind all that... my anxiety at having a white test booklet with little bubbles...

I didn't finish the exam.

By the time everyone else had left, I was a sweaty mess replete with a headache that would not subside. Too late for the beta blockers I am prescribed for exams, too late for Concerta to kick in to help me concentrate, I was simply exhausted.

In explaining my situation to the lab TA he could not have been more professional. What a great teacher he will be someday. At his young age he understood and didn't judge, rather helping me understand how to study physics, what it takes to be successful in the course, how to best prepare for labs, and again, not judging me.

What relief!

Headed from that lab for my parked car and promptly found out, my purse was missing.

It still is.

Day one score: -2

So, how does a lady like me cope with that? For a brief moment I thought it a sign, I should quit school, stop pursuing my new path, and become a Zamboni driver for the MN Wild (just kidding).

Actually, I count my blessings and hug my son. It is the only way for me to keep moving forward when the days come like this that make me shake my head, suck down a diet coke and some Tylenol, and hit the sack.

Did I mention my car accident today!? :)

1st Physics Experiment

Some years ago I was driving in a car with my then boyfriend. Tall, charming, good looking, dashing, even hot some might say, and a tad over the top if you get my hint :)

Anyway, because of his outward know-it-all attitude toward any and all subjects, I quickly argued with him on a physics discussion we had. It was heated. I KNEW I was right and he was wrong, dang it anyway. This one time, I HAD to be right...

I was wrong. It sucks. I found out last night while trying it myself. What was it?

In a small SUV driving 60 mph down I-94 a person tosses up a coin, how fast is the coin traveling forward (NOT up and down)?

In my ignorance, I said zero because the moment it would leave my hand, it would stop moving forward (momentum be damned). Of course, if that were true, the coin would flip through the back window of a truck and make quite the hole as the truck's window kept moving forward.

So, I learned last night, "he" really did know-it-all (or not) and I learned my first lesson in physics.

I think I'm really going to love this class as it turns everything I've ever thought about motion, distance, travel, space, etc on its head.

Here's to starting school in two days!

P=MD, Just Pass

Courtesy of another blog and Youtube...