Judge Says Med Students Need Teaching

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Do you think med students need classes on how to act outside the hospital?

  • yes

    Votes: 11 16.2%
  • no

    Votes: 57 83.8%

  • Total voters
    68

futuredoc15

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Former North Platte Dr. Michael Koning was sentenced Friday to five years of probation for tax evasion and ordered to work in the tropical Pacific island of Saipan.
Koning and a string of other North Platte medical professionals were sentenced to probation, restitution and fines, the culmination of a seven-year Internal Revenue Service investigation.
They all pleaded guilty to federal income tax evasion.
Koning, an anesthesiologist, was the most heavily involved doctor in the scheme.
He is currently living in Saipan and working at the island’s hospital, where he earns $200,000 a year under a two-year contract, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf said during sentencing.
Kopf also fined Koning $60,000 and ordered him to perform 100 hours of community service during his five-year probation.
If Koning has to leave Saipan during probation, the court will send him to a similar place, perhaps an Indian reservation, Kopf said.
After the sentence was set, Kopf said he doesn’t like to lecture people at sentences, but then he said the doctors involved were beyond belief.
“There is an entitlement mentality in the medical profession that is just astounding,” Kopf said.
"I understand that doctors are trained not to doubt themselves because when they give critical care they can’t doubt themselves; they have to act. But that breeds a sort of egotism that is really hard to take," he said.
“The medical schools would be good to teach…that what they (students)are taught to do as physicians may not be how they can live their lives outside the doctor’s suite or the surgical suite; that there are differences," Kopf said.
"And, if the government has done nothing else in this case, it’s made that point abundantly clear to a bunch of doctors who were piggish beyond belief," he said.
More here:
http://www.northplattebulletin.com/index.asp?show=news&action=readStory&storyID=22288&pageID=3



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It's a pretty sweet punishment, though: 2 years on a tropical island and $200K a year. It's not the $800K he was pulling down, but at least it gets him out of North Platte...
 
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If there is a group people more egotistical than doctors, it has got to be judges.

That being said, this dude got off easy.
 
Kind of off-topic, but how do these kinds of convictions factor into licensing? Could your license be revoked for this kind of stuff?
 
Oh, yes, an hour-long large group lecture on the ethics of physician tax evation that I'm not going to attend or bother to podcast. No thanks.
 
Former North Platte Dr. Michael Koning was sentenced Friday to five years of probation for tax evasion and ordered to work in the tropical Pacific island of Saipan.
Koning and a string of other North Platte medical professionals were sentenced to probation, restitution and fines, the culmination of a seven-year Internal Revenue Service investigation.
They all pleaded guilty to federal income tax evasion.
Koning, an anesthesiologist, was the most heavily involved doctor in the scheme.
He is currently living in Saipan and working at the island's hospital, where he earns $200,000 a year under a two-year contract, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf said during sentencing.
Kopf also fined Koning $60,000 and ordered him to perform 100 hours of community service during his five-year probation.
If Koning has to leave Saipan during probation, the court will send him to a similar place, perhaps an Indian reservation, Kopf said.
After the sentence was set, Kopf said he doesn't like to lecture people at sentences, but then he said the doctors involved were beyond belief.
"There is an entitlement mentality in the medical profession that is just astounding," Kopf said.
"I understand that doctors are trained not to doubt themselves because when they give critical care they can't doubt themselves; they have to act. But that breeds a sort of egotism that is really hard to take," he said.
"The medical schools would be good to teach…that what they (students)are taught to do as physicians may not be how they can live their lives outside the doctor's suite or the surgical suite; that there are differences," Kopf said.
"And, if the government has done nothing else in this case, it's made that point abundantly clear to a bunch of doctors who were piggish beyond belief," he said.
More here:
http://www.northplattebulletin.com/index.asp?show=news&action=readStory&storyID=22288&pageID=3


Nice job by the judge of making a broad generalization about our profession.....

At no point in my schooling have I taken a class in "why being a doctor entitles you to commit crimes"

I just read the article that said a CRNA and a school teacher were both involved in the scheme too......? Are they also cocky, piggish and entitled professions?
 
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Sense of entitlement?

This judge is clueless. In the USA you're basically told:

"Train for at least 14 years at an expense of $200K with compounding interest (double if you marry another student doctor!) and no days off and if you or anyone on your teams makes a mistake you'll never be allowed to work again and if we're having an especially bad day we'll drag your name through the mud in any media we can find. By the way, while you're slaving for that minimum wage on the tail end, everyone will tell you how greedy you are because you won't scrape hamburgers out of their brain arteries for free."
 
This judge is an obvious idiot and its quite ironic he is preaching about schooling when he obviously missed civics himself.

Last time I checked judge's job are to interrupt the laws, not try to create legislation. Kopf sounds like the real intellectual...by all means throw the book at them for violating the law.

By his logic...any profession which has had tax fraud should have a mandatory courses should on ethics regarding paying taxes...right.
 
Come on guys--did you even read the article. Take anything the OP posts w/ a giant

shutterstock_19554931.jpg
 
I read it, the criminal (who happens to be a doctor) and the idiot judge sound both like real winners.

Ironically, he just did what the accountant dude did.

MAYBE what we SHOULD be teaching in medical school is to completely ignore the advice of professionals who train exclusively in a particular area. Because, as an anesthesiologist, he probably knew nothing about taxes, let along tax evasion, and so did what the his bro-in-marriage told him to do in order to make the monies.

Lawyers? **** em. Accountants? **** em. Surgeons? **** em, Ill do it myself!

Some dude smart enough to scheme schemed. The only difference between this guy and everyone else is that he got caught. Whoopity.
 
On a somewhat similar note, I'm surprised they don't teach more business in medicine. We take the best and the brightest and make them live off pennies for over a decade while accruing boatloads of debt w/ interest. When you're done, you're in your 30s, you haven't seen the outside of a hospital or library in years and your car is being held together by duct tape. Then you get a big salary, by almost anyone's standards, and have no idea how to manage it, retirement or your loans.

Please note: I am NOT saying MDs are over-payed. I don't need anyone to unload on me about doctors not making enough. Take a deep breath. That is all.
 
Anyone see the irony of someone who makes others stand when he enters the room and address him as "your honor" saying that any other profession has an ego problem?
 
Anyone see the irony of someone who makes others stand when he enters the room and address him as "your honor" saying that any other profession has an ego problem?

Eh, this doesn't bother me. I come from a family of attorneys (don't worry, no med-mal or PI or any other skeevy type) and I think that if you make it to the level of a judge, you earned it. We wear white coats, have people call us doctor, expect people to tell us the most intimate details of their lives (stuff people wouldn't tell their husbands/wives/pastors) and get upset when our patients don't do what we tell them. I think it goes both ways. Even still, a touch of irony, absolutely.
 
Makes me think of Doctor Who where the time lords get to pick their name after staring into the time vortex. The Doctor's enemy is The Master.

Yea, I geeked it out baby.

Seriously though, it is just a formality thing. Even some academics will correct you if you call them "Professor" when they aren't full professors yet. Whenever patients ask me whether they should call me doctor, I say I'm just a student but they can call me whatever they like, Doctor, First Name, A-hole, Tall goofy guy....all works the same.
 
Baisden, who cooked up a tax-fraud scheme for a dozen people in North Platte, was sentenced Thursday to three years in federal prison for setting up dummy corporations for his clients.

How to put this.

If Dr. Genius believes an accountant who tells him he can pay zero income tax if he gives all his paychecks to Dr. Genius Inc, well...

dr-nick-riviera-billboard-the-simpsons.jpg


...nuff said.

One summer I was working for a carpenter without so much as a high school diploma, and he liked to "philosophize" to me about the things they weren't teaching me in college. One day it was all about the ways people try to cheat on property tax and the ways they get caught. He never got around to income tax and shell corporations, but I'm pretty sure he would have laughed about that one.
 
On a somewhat similar note, I'm surprised they don't teach more business in medicine. We take the best and the brightest and make them live off pennies for over a decade while accruing boatloads of debt w/ interest. When you're done, you're in your 30s, you haven't seen the outside of a hospital or library in years and your car is being held together by duct tape. Then you get a big salary, by almost anyone's standards, and have no idea how to manage it, retirement or your loans.

Please note: I am NOT saying MDs are over-payed. I don't need anyone to unload on me about doctors not making enough. Take a deep breath. That is all.

See but the false assumption is that a business class is going to make you understand business.

Lets take an MBA program, while yes some of it is "class work", what is considered the valuable part is the large team projects you do throughout it. I dont really think there is time for this in med school and honestly would rather not have my time wasted by some random business theory class which is going to do nothing to help me.

Business is kinda like surgery, you arent going to become good at it by reading a book. You need to practice it and experience it for yourself.

As far as personal finances goes, it mostly self discipline and again sorry 3 lectures randomly given in M2 year arent going to teach that.
 
Eh, this doesn't bother me. I come from a family of attorneys (don't worry, no med-mal or PI or any other skeevy type) and I think that if you make it to the level of a judge, you earned it. We wear white coats, have people call us doctor, expect people to tell us the most intimate details of their lives (stuff people wouldn't tell their husbands/wives/pastors) and get upset when our patients don't do what we tell them. I think it goes both ways. Even still, a touch of irony, absolutely.

For the record I agree with you, I also don't mind that judges are treated this way because it is a distinguished position. I only meant to point out the "pot and kettle-ness" of it :)
 
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