Imagine you go to a hair salon. You ask for a simple haircut. But the hair stylist tells you: “Oh no, no, no! A haircut is not what you need. You need to perm your hair and put highlights in it”. You reply: “No, thanks. I just want a haircut”. The hairstylist becomes angry. She shouts: “Don’t tell me how to do my job!” She tells you how stupid you are for not wanting a perm and highlights. She calls you names. She calls another hairstylist in and both of them start screaming at you. Imagine another scenario: you go to an auto mechanic and ask for an oil change. The mechanic tells you: “An oil change is not all you need. You’ll also need to have your transmission fluid changed, a break job, and the new paint on the car”. You say, “No, thanks. I would prefer not to do all this. Just the oil change, please”. The car mechanic becomes belligerent, tells you that he is a specialist and you must do as he says, calls you anti-science and threatens you with dire consequences if you don’t agree to what he wants to do to your car. It’s very hard to imagine that a hair stylist or a car mechanic would treat their clients like this. If they do, you’ll just walk out. If they persist in doing this, they won’t stay in business for long. Now imagine: your one-year-old fell down and hurt herself. You suspect she might have a fracture. You take her to the doctor and ask the doctor to have the X-rays done to check whether there’s a fracture. The doctor tells you: “I see that her vaccinations are not up to date. So, she’ll have to have…” You say: “No, doctor. We are not here for the vaccinations. We are here because she hurt herself, and I need you to treat that”. The doctor becomes very angry. She shouts: “Don’t tell me how to do my job!” She tells you how stupid you are for not wanting the vaccines for your child. She calls you names. She calls another doctor in and both of them start screaming at you. Worst of all, they threaten to call CPS on you if you don’t comply. Oops… this is not something you imagine. This is the reality of many parents. Or imagine this: you are pregnant. You go to your prenatal appointment. The doctor, after spending three minutes examining you, tells you: “You first birth was a Cesarean. Therefore, we must schedule a Cesarean at 39 weeks. You protest: “But, doctor, I had two vaginal births with no complications after my C-section! I really want to have a vaginal birth. And I would want the birth to start spontaneously”. The doctor becomes belligerent, tells you that he is a specialist and he is the one who gets to decide, calls you anti-science and threatens you with a court order to perform a C-section and a call to CPS if you don’t agree to a scheduled Cesarean. Oops… reality again. What is going on here? How can the doctors get away with the behavior that would get hairstylists and car mechanics out of business? How can they disregard the patient’s wishes, bully and harass the patients, and not only stay in business, but to prosper financially? How did this come about? Ladies and Gentlemen, thank the government regulations for the bullying doctors. Thank the government-created, government-enforced monopoly. The only reason doctors behave like this is because they know you cannot walk away and go somewhere else. There’s no “somewhere else”. The number of doctors allowed to practice is artificially restricted. All doctors have government licenses, and they know that if someone dares to compete with them without a benefit of a government license, they’ll be criminally prosecuted. Doctors enjoy monopoly. That’s why they don’t have to worry about the market forces. That’s why they don’t need to make the clients happy. You are not a “client”. You don’t get to tell them what to do, and how to do it. You are a “patient”. They tell you what to do. They are in a position of power, and you are subservient to them. American Medical Association lobbied to have it this way. (See, for example, Chapter 5 of Mary Ruwart’s book “Healing Our World in the Age of Aggression”). Thanks, AMA, for using the guns of the government to take patient’s autonomy away.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 01:07:33 +0000
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