Reason: Point of principle and to set a clear reminder to all of standards and sound public policy.
So if we give a person lethal injection for a heinous crime, do we then bring in the dead body for additional prosecution and a
second death penalty sentence to prove a point? This would simply be a waste of time and money. Practically speaking, all you're doing is sinking more societal resources into someone that fundamentally harmed society. It does not make sense.
Honestly, I have wondered at times about re-checks on pathology reports. I know of a person that recently had a needle biopsy, and they charged $12,000 for it. When the person had patho and slides sent to a specializing facility, of course their patho people reviewed them. After the surgery for tissue removal, which, with anesthesia included, along with surgery and recovery, amazingly, those costs were not relatively much higher than the original needle biopsy. Frankly, I was astounded by the cost of the original needle biopsy. The tissue review after surgery was not as costly as the original biopsy. The cost factors here seem off to me. There needs to be more digging about theses procedural costs, b/c some of them make no sense--but I digress.
Sure. It seems like there is no one actually regulating the set price of particular health care costs at private or even public institutions. It's simply too easy to dunk your hand into the huge pot of honey the government lays out for you at taxpayer expense. Why wouldn't you have a 100,000%+ profit margin if it was perfectly legal to do so?
At any rate, people are trusting that those performing these tests/evaluations are thorough and accurate. They are also trusting in the soundness of the charges--and they are worried about the variations in costs from one facility to another--why the capriciousness giving the current coding system and such? Sadly, I should not be surprised to find out there may well be cases where things were found that were not so accurate. It's bad when things are missed, but it's also terrible when things are not confirmed--when they are not the horrors they were said to be. Unless you are looking at the slides, and you know full well what you are viewing, you are forced to trust. And when people hear the word cancer, they are seized by shock and fright. It's very hard for them to fully process--especially initially. All they want is for it to be gone.
Then the healthcare provider steps in to provide guidance. If he's not telling them to get a second opinion (which I see no reason for him not to do unless he's in PP), then that's got to be mal. Mistakes are always possible, as you've noted, and that's got to be recognized by any thinking person. And apparently here, we are assuming the patient is unable to think (perhaps due to the shock, sure) or use common sense, and therefore the burden rests with provider to ensure the patient carries out the proper precautions to absolutely minimize any and all error.
The story Seth shares is particularly troubling to me. People put ALL their TRUST in medicine and physicians. To take advantage of this in such a way when patients and families are most vulnerable is, in my view, on the sociopathic side of things.
You are absolutely right. Apt entrepreneurs must at times act as sociopaths/psychopaths in order to achieve the best economic results. Every pressure from our socially-constructed economy pushes them in this direction. But Fata's problem was he did not consider the legality of what he was doing. According to the economic rules of our society, it is perfectly acceptable to disregard the lives of others and potentially cause harm,
as long as what you are doing is considered to be legal, otherwise the liability may far outweigh the potential for profit. So in essence, Fata was certainly a sociopath/psychopath, but in a way that was economically ineffectual -- he is therefore a failure on all fronts, economically and humanistically. Quite a caricature of a ridiculous person.
My overall point here is emphasizing medicine's and physicians' impact on individuals and the collective--society as a whole. The dedication must be wholly on the patient first; otherwise they are worse than snake-oil salesman--and are merely well-educated creatures of prey.
This should be obvious enough to everyone, but as you said yourself! Patients apparently lack common sense and the ability to think properly, and isn't everyone in society other than the currently practicing physicians considered to be patients? And there you have the reason for this phenomenon.
This really emphasizes the greed-factor that can be seen in healthcare. It's innately sick within itself.
It's encouraged via numerous media of economic socialization.
Medicine needs to take some steps back and consider where they must influence its profession on the whole--where and how it must stand up and say, "Physician, heal thyself." Society and the public must be a part of this too. Who is checking? Where are the systems of checks and balances, and why doesn't that matter so much anymore. And as this is, it is no wonder why some of us can't stand hard and fast against tort reform. If the legal system is a means by which to keep those in check that are not able to do so b/c of their own lack of ethics, than what other recourse is left to individuals and society?
It seems like the only people truly capable of checking on physicians of a certain specialty are other physicians of that specialty. You would have to set up a regulating body within each specialty, made up of highly skilled and trusted physicians within that specialty, which lobbies the federal government for the power to review and revise the diagnoses and treatments of every physician in the country that practices said specialty. It also may have to have an investigative unit to cover diagnoses and treatments that may be considered not only unethical but seriously harmful to the patients of any physician in question. Or something to that effect. However, this kind of regulation could cause all sorts of kinks in the current medical work flow, and therefore may do more harm than good.
This case in particular reflects something very insidious and grave in medicine and healthcare. That this could so easily have affected so many people is beyond disturbing.
I don't know. I feel like to ignore this side of humanity (and it really is just one of many sides, not the only side of any human by any means), again, is to exercise a complete lack of common sense or general experience with human beings. The question is then how we can deter this side from exercising the "predation" you mentioned. Apparently no one has figured that out yet.
