YOUR DOCTOR’S PRIORITIES

By Lawrence Wilson, MD

© December 2009, The Center For Development

Medical errors and mistakes of various kinds are rampant in American allopathic medical care. A recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine (2010) suggested that 40,000 mistakes are made every day! In American hospitals. Some are minor, like a nurse not washing her hands before touching a patient. Others are serious and life-threatening.

This article discusses just one set of reasons for these errors that everyone must be concerned with. Essentially, you are generally not your doctor’s first priority. In fact, you are not even his second or third priority. This is a major reason for medical failures, errors and ever higher costs. These facts may also hold the key to fixing our medical system.

Disclaimer: I never suggest that you stop any medication or postpone or cancel any medical diagnostic test, treatment, procedure or intervention. This article is for informational purposes only and not intended as diagnosis, prevention or treatment for any disease, mental or physical, real or imaginary.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS IMPORTANT ARTICLE

This article should help you learn about the medical system so you can make better choices about drugs, insurance, doctors and even going to the hospital, should you require a visit there.

We will discuss why doctors are not putting you first, even though they may seem like they are. Let us discuss what tend to be your doctor’s real priorities or loyalties today.

PRIORITY #1. LICENSING AUTHORITIES

Government bureaucrats and medical doctors sit on state medical boards, laboratory licensing boards, hospital licensing boards and many others. If your licensed doctor does not abide by their dictates, he will lose his license or licenses and soon be out of business.

These boards are empowered by law to “protect you” by dictating to your doctor, and to your laboratory and hospital, exactly what they may and may not say and do. Sadly, people vote for more licensing, thinking this protects them. However, the truth is that is mainly protects the status quo, including the drug medical cartel that has been discussed in other articles.

Licensing not only damages the doctor-patient relationship. It gives patients a phony idea about the competence of the doctor and hospital, it discriminates against those who want to innovate, it stops change and it protects outdated and often toxic or dangerous therapies and tests.

There are alternatives to licensing that would make doctors far more responsible to their patients. Lies that one often hears are that unlicensed practitioners are “unregulated”. This is not true at all. Unlicensed practitioners are subject to all the criminal laws that exist such as fraud, negligence and malpractice. They are also regulated by the laws of the marketplace. This basically means if they don’t help people, they will be out of business quickly. The same cannot be said of many licensed people who hold their position because of their license, not because of their level of competence and how well they satisfy their patients.

Another lie is that medical boards are “unbiased” and have consumer input. This is never true, in my experience. They are mainly made up of the very professionals they are supposed to regulate. They have clear conflicts of interest and the public is not the main priority.

The licensing system in medical care will not change, however, unless more people understand the problems with licensing, which I have only touched upon. For much more information about licensing, see the article entitled The Case Against Medical Licensing.

PRIORITY #2. MALPRACTICE ATTORNEYS

Many malpractice attorneys lie in wait for doctors to misspeak or misbehave so they can file a lawsuit. This is somewhat helpful for medical consumers, as it makes doctors more careful. However, it can damage or ruin your health because it gives rise to “defensive medicine”. This is not medicine at all. It is the running of thousands of unnecessary tests and even procedures to satisfy lawyers rather than for the patient’s good.

It is a protection racket, to be blunt. It may greatly increase medical costs and subjects you to tests and even operations that can be unnecessary and dangerous. You may be placed on a medication, for example, just so that no lawyer could even claim the doctor “failed to treat” a problem, even if the doctor really does not believe you need the drug.

This is so prevalent it is taken for granted in our medical system. People are often guinea pigs for tests, drugs and even operations that are hardly needed, or should be used as a last resort. Hospitals are by far the worst places where defensive medicine is used.

It is all done to protect the doctor, hospital, or even a laboratory, but not for you. So, once again, you are not even second in line, but perhaps third in the doctor’s list of priorities.

PRIORITY #3. INSURANCE COMPANIES, BOTH PRIVATE AND GOVERNMENT

Another misplaced priority and loyalty of your doctor, hospital or other medical facility is often insurers. Insurance often dictates which tests will be run, which drug used, and which procedures are suggested as well.

Those drugs and procedures that are not covered by insurance are often simply ignored, I am sorry to say. The doctor would rather not face the embarrassment of telling you that there are other options, but your insurance won’t cover them.

For example, if insurance will not pay for your doctor to discuss your diet or lifestyle, this is often overlooked because there would be no reimbursement for it for the doctor or hospital. If, by chance, your doctor recommends a method or even a drug that is not covered, he is afraid you will be angry with him and go elsewhere. After all, who wants to pay out of pocket if one has already paid for insurance or is on the dole, as they say in Great Britain?

A fine doctor will bring it up anyway, but may be censured for doing so, or could lose his job at his HMO or PPO for going against the accepted practice methods of the outfit. Once again, you are not the main focus. Instead, your friendly doctor follows a set of guidelines set up far away by people who know you only as a numbered statistic.

PRIORITY #4 IN SOME CASES. RESPONDING TO ADS AND NEWS FLASHES

Shameless advertising by drug companies and medical device makers is everywhere. Also, the medical cartel issues exciting “press releases” at least monthly about the latest new drug or operation. Many of these announcements amount to little more than advertising. The truth is that most new drugs that are announced are later found to have serious side effects and a number are withdrawn from the market within a few years. However, that warning is never part of the press release.

The goal of all this is to cause patients to call on doctors and demand the latest drug, operation or other item shown on television. Sadly, most doctors go along and try the drug on the patient. This is because they know that if they say it is a waste of money, or it is toxic, or it is new and untried, or they haven’t studied it enough, the patient may just find a new doctor who will give him the advertised drug.

The doctor excuses his lax attitude by figuring that it is probably safe, so why not give it a try. If it were unsafe, the FDA would not have approved it, right? WRONG! This is another integrity issue with doctors and the FDA that, once again, can severely impact your health.

Most new drugs are to be avoided until proven safe for at least 5 years, I would say. Even that is not long enough for some of them, as the problems take time to identify clearly in many instances. Later, we learn that often the drug company knew about the problem from their early rat studies, but that is another story of the lack of integrity of most pharmaceutical companies today.

The news the other day was that Paxil, which causes an eight-fold increase in suicide among teenagers and increased violence, is unsafe and the company knew about it for 15 years and didn’t tell anyone. They are now under investigation and it will take another few years to get the drug off the market. It will, however, be just in time for the drug patent to expire so no one can copy the drug. This is how the drug companies operate routinely. One must understand this. It is not intended to be a blanket attack on all drugs and all drug companies. However, too often profits and patents drive the industry and the doctors are in the dark and act simply as the “pushers” who do the bidding of the large drug companies and their friends who work for the FDA.

Once again, your interests are too often shoved aside in place of financial and other motives of advertisers and other “third parties”.

PRIORITY #5. OTHER BUSINESS CONSIDERATIONS

The first four priorities can be avoided by going to unlicensed people who are not “in the system”. However, this is often difficult to find. This next priority, however, is one that is true of all practitioners, whether licensed, alternative, holistic, government or privately paid. In fact, it is true of many types of services It is that doctors, like everyone else, may not have the highest level of personal and business ethics.

This is true whether one lives in a nation with a “private” health care system or one in that has a socialized or government-run health care system. In these nations, doctors must often run a certain number of people through the office to get paid adequately for their work or fulfill certain quotas. In fact, there is often more corruption in government-run health care systems around the world than in privately-run systems.

Examples of less than ethical methods of diagnosis and treatment might include:

Recommending fancy, expensive tests and drugs instead of inexpensive methods such as diet and lifestyle because the doctor might receive some type of “kickback” for doing so.

medical equipment such as x-ray machines and scanners must be paid for, malpractice insurance is costly, office staff must be paid, medical office rent is high and student loans must also often be repaid. Hospitals and even labs also have enormous overhead costs, many of which are related to complying with hundreds of government regulations, environmental controls, reporting requirements for the government, HIPPA rules and much more that has little or nothing at all to do with your healing.

You must always remember this or you may not understand as well why your doctor recommends what he does. I say this hopefully not with malice, but simply because there is truth in it. Always question doctors as to whether a test, procedure, operation or medication or even a vitamin product is definitely needed or just recommended.

In addition, some medical specialties are highly competitive and your doctor may recommend what he thinks you will like, rather than what is really best for you.

What this means is that you must be forever watchful that drugs, tests and procedures are not recommended just to satisfy a quota or to pad the bill, or some other financial reason.

I am truly shocked when I describe my nutritional approach to health care to some medical colleagues. They listen thoughtfully and some even get excited, but those willing to confide usually say privately that it would be bad for business because we actually heal the people at deep levels and after a time they need not return for more treatment. Very few ever follow up to learn with me. This is the reality of modern drug medicine.

Part of this is also a greed factor. A hundred years ago medical care was given for very little money and doctors were among the poor in society. Medicine was considered among the most honored professions and a high income was not the doctor’s priority. This has changed, unfortunately, in too many cases.

Doctors that charge too much should be avoided as they are less trustworthy in my mind. There is no reason a doctor should charge a fortune and you don’t need to be paying for his Porsche or Lexus, or mansion.

CONCLUSION

Many doctors, in interviews, have told reporters and others that they would never undergo the drug or other therapy they prescribe for their patients. Why do they keep recommending them for others?

Because they are essentially forced to do so by licensing boards, insurers, legal authorities, the demands of business as usual, the censure of their colleagues and other reasons unrelated to patient care.

Let the consumer beware applies to medical care more than ever for this reason. Once you thoroughly understand this, you will become a far better medical consumer. To check the safety of your hospital, go to HealthGrades Web site.

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