As hard as doctors try to do what is right, there is the constant financial pressure. There are bills to pay and the potential for a lavish lifestyle. Doctors also feel entitled. A long and costly education, long hours, law suits, malpractice insurance and putting up with an endless procession of patients who will do nothing to help themselves seems deserving of more than average pay. The solution is doing more. Conveniently, the medical standard of care (what doctors are taught to do to avoid liability) encourages more of about everything. More lab tests, longer hospitalization, more diagnostics, more drugs and exploratory surgery. So, although in many cases the best advice to a patient is to go home and make life changes, doctors too often do that which is safe and creates income, which just so happens to be what the patient wants anyway. Medical insurance is not the solution. It shares the blame for the explosion in healthcare costs. Give anyone access to a bottomless vat of money that promises cure and they will dip in with gusto. If patients were made to pay as they go, people would do more shopping and use more discernment. Doctors would be forced to use judgment as well. The net result would be a lot less unnecessary medical care. When responsibility shifts to individuals to take care of themselves, there will be more health and a lot less medical injury. Since everything seems to move by the force of dollars, why not shift the rewards? We could do it like it was done in ancient times and even more recently in the Far East: Pay doctors as long as the patient is well. If the patient becomes ill, the doctor forfeits the pay. But that's too rational. There are too many money interests fighting tooth and claw to keep things exactly as they are. It also does not fit the fable that disease is "just one of those things" to which we may innocently fall victim. Why hold the doctor (or ourselves, more appropriately) accountable for an "act of God?"
