by Cory Franklin
Chicago Tribune Opinions of the People
November 12, 2011
“The people who receive the worst care in America,” I said, “are the very poor and the very rich that the very poor received substandard medical care notion that the very rich received poor medical care.
The rich are used to telling everyone what they want and how they want it, and they think nothing of bending a doctor’s will to their own. The doctor abandons his medical judgment.
Last week, the point was driven home following the trial of Dr. Conrad Murray, found guilty of manslaughter by giving the intravenous anesthetic drug Propofol to pop star Michael Jackson to help him sleep Safe to say, no middle-class American has ever suffered Michael Jackson’s fate as the result of a doctor’s house call.
Lest there be any lingering doubt about medical care for the very rich, the new biography by Walter Isaacson of Apple co-founder Steven Jobs provides another graphic example. Isaacson discusses Jobs’ medical care in detail. He outlines the force of Jobs’ personality in dealing with his medical team and how the patient delayed an operation for nearly a year for a malignancy that might have been cured with immediate surgery.
Though Jobs received much of his medical care at Stanford University Medical Center, one of the world’s top medical institutions, Isaacson states that no one there fully took charge of all aspects of Jobs’ condition. Physician, heal thyself. The cases of Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and Steve Jobs provide cautionary tales and proof that in today’s America, the rich and powerful sometimes receive no better medical care than the poor and disadvantaged. Space constraint requires excerpting; yet this we aren’t at the end of the saga.
From The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery’s Headline news
11/21.2011
Today’s Top Story
“Super-Committee fails to reach deal”
Politico reports that the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction has announced its failure to come to an agreement for reducing the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next ten years. Under terms of legislation that created the committee; the committee’s failure means the automatic spending cuts including reductions to Medicare and Medicaid; are now scheduled to take effect in 2013. In addition though, a 27% decrease in Medicare reimbursement to physicians is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2012. It seems that Congress is aiming to include everyone in the Bad Medicine scenario.
Mitchell B. Sheinkop, M.D.
1565 N. LaSalle Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
312-475-1893