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July 06, 2007
Positives
One of the two people who read this site posed a question in person to me that I thought I should address. Why am I still a doctor if medicine is all that useless?
I am documenting for myself, and those few, those happy few, that band of brothers, how the current approach to medicine has failed us. It does not follow that I have nothing to offer patients as their doctor. In fact, I hope I am working to the point that focuses on the greater benefit to the patient in both of us understanding the limitations of the current system. There is much to offer in terms of relief from suffering when those terms are properly understood.
Medical care has a commodity aspect. The commodity being purchased is a mix of goods (access to medications), advice, time, and availability. The relationship aspect includes the last three of these, but cannot be quantified, which makes it harder to subject to the free market, or even to market at all. That is the profession side of medicine. The tension between those two aspects is a driving force in health care change.
| By Robert Maddox | 02:54 PM