Skip to main content

Don't Bully Your Doctors

  By the time you are reading this the election will have been completed. We may not have a final result, but the voting will be over.  Our country is extremely politically divided right now and tensions are at an all-time high, but when discord slips into threats towards physician leaders and bullying of medical organizations, things have gone too far.  

I come from a family whose members have a variety of political opinions, as I imagine many of you do.  Some are democrats, but others are republican, libertarian, green or something else altogether. If we only ever loved those who have identical ideologies a lonely world ours would be. Our differences make us interesting, and diversity lends balance to society. As a county, we must remain civil and respectfully strive to reach sensible compromises.  If families can disagree, but come together in ways that only families can, our country can do this as well.

However, right now, in the midst of a pandemic, things are happening that have crossed a line.  Unfortunately (and unbelievably) medical leaders and public health officers have come under fire during the pandemic for just doing their jobs.  Revered medical organizations have been politicized. The CDC was influenced to make medically unsound recommendations (quickly reversed, thank goodness), pharmaceutical companies have been pushed to rush production of medications and vaccines, and FDA has been pressured to approve treatments and vaccines before appropriate testing has been done. Public health officers have been threatened for making unpopular recommendations. Many have resigned.  IT IS NOT OKAY TO BULLY AND THREATEN PHYSICIAN LEADERS AND MEDICAL ORGANIZATIONS FOR DOING THEIR JOBS TO PROTECT AND CARE FOR PEOPLE. Expression of this type of sentiment or action should be legally punished with severe penalties whether you are a member of an extremist group, or the president of the United States.  Doctors and health organizations need to be free to make the best recommendations possible based on knowledge, science and concern for public health.  Violence, hate speech and bullying of medical professionals has no place in any political party.  Shame on those who have propagated this type of behavior, and shame on those who have condoned it.  Turning a blind eye to threats aimed at caring, hard working medical professionals will have nothing but negative consequences in the future.  

A line must be drawn when it comes to manipulation, threats or abuse towards the doctors, practitioners, nurses and medical organizations that are tasked with protecting public health.  Violence, hate speech, and bullying should not be tolerated under any circumstances, and such behavior merits severe consequences. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cash for Clunkers and EMR's

Our household has had the dubious honor of being deeply and directly affected by some of the major initiatives contained in the economic stimulus package. My husband, who is a sales manager at Mid City Motor world has been working long, busy days trying to accommodate the rush of car buyers flooding in to take advantage of the “Cash for Clunkers” program, while our pediatric office, with the promise of future reimbursement for “meaningful use” of an EMR, has begun the process of converting to electronic medical records. The cash for clunkers program is meant to reduce carbon emissions by encouraging people to turn in gas guzzlers and purchase more fuel efficient vehicles, but questions remain as to the overall benefit. Cash for Clunkers does not reduce, recycle or reuse in the least. The clunkers must be destroyed and sent to landfills,—so no used vehicles come out of the transactions to sell again, and no parts can be gleaned for resale. Jobs involved with used car sales and p
2 comments
Read more
Response to the North Coast Journal article on health care reform I am a local pediatrician and I really enjoyed reading Alan Sanborn's salient and entertaining article in favor of health reform. I, too, am an advocate of a single payer system because I can see no other way to improve care and contain costs. There is fat in the system, but it belongs to: INSURANCE COMPANIES (most of these companies keep about 20% of the premiums thay take in for themselves in the form of administartive costs and profit), MALPRACTICE LAWYERS and PHARMACUETICAL COMPANIES. Without fundamental reform, including tort reform, much of the money put into the system will not go towards health care essentials. To rebut Ron Ross, the comparison between running health care and running a company is not a comparison that works, because there are fundamental differences between some one with cancer who needs treatment, and some one who would like to mail a package (i.e. the Fed Ex example). Health
Post a Comment
Read more

Parable of the Pizza Shop

One day a man decided to open a pizza shop.  The first week he sold pizzas, collected money from his customers; the happy customers ate hot pizza and business was good. The next week many of his customers who came in had pizza insurance, and had already paid Blue Wall Insurance for their pizzas.  Since so many of his customers had purchased pizza insurance, the man signed a contract with Blue Wall agreeing to discount his pizzas in return for a larger volume of customers.  And so it went with United Pizza Insurance, PizzaNet and Pizzaetna.   Pretty soon the man started having trouble getting the pizza insurance companies to pay for the pizzas he sold, and he had to wait a few months for his payment.  They also started meddling with his cooking and trying to dictate what toppings he could use.  They even restricted the use of some of the more expensive ingredients.  He had to hire extra employees to fill out forms and paperwork they required before they would reimburse him.  Th
1 comment
Read more