"Doctors Abandon Patients In Florida"
Doctors are running away from Florida.
A whole lot of them!
A couple of weeks ago
the only hospital in our city announced this:
If you come to the emergency room
There will be NO doctors.
Even though that sounds like fiction, it's true.
The doctors refuse to work in the hospital,
because they fear law suits.
Today in Orlando, doctors picketed
against the big malpractice awards given to victims by the courts.
We saw them marching around on TV.
The doctors claim the malpractice insurance premiums are so high
they can't afford to heal people anymore.
The doctors AND the insurance companies blame the lawyers
and their clients,
who have been harmed in different degrees by bad doctoring.
They claim that the good doctors are suffering because of the bad ones.
Here's what bothers me:
There is no possible way a civilian can find out which are the bad doctors
before they go for medical help.
The information is locked away…
"Top Secret".
You have to gamble with your life or the life of a loved one,
because the lousy doctors are protected by the medical association.
You can't find out who are the butchers and bunglers,
which ones have had a lot of malpractice suits or complaints against them,
or even who graduated last in his class.
The information is not for our eyes.
It's sacred.
On the Internet you can find out all kinds of things about most everybody,
but not doctors.
I personally know of a local surgeon
who has mutilated people,
operating in his office because no hospital will have him.
He is still going strong.
He has a cozy office and great showmanship,
and he advertises all over town.
After the surgery, the patients are on their own.
No aftercare.
He got his money.
Someone I know had a serious infection after surgery,
and this doctor was not taking calls,
or seeing anybody but the next paying victims.
We all know of cases where things are mistakenly left inside a patient,
wrong limbs are amputated,
and patients die of wrong medications.
It's become tradition.
Why get excited?
These people whose lives are destroyed
deserve all the money they can get from the courts.
They ought to get the quack's house, car, and dog.
No amount of money can undo the damage done by bad medical care.
You may think I'm blaming all the doctors for bad medicine.
I'm not.
I am blaming all the doctors and their protective organizations
for hiding the information about the ones who regularly ruin lives.
The ones who will kill again are allowed to remain anonymous.
This is criminal behavior.
If the really dangerous physicians could be weeded out
and not allowed to practice,
there would be less malpractice, less law suits,
and lower malpractice insurance rates.
Rather than give up their incompetent pals,
they prefer to leave the state,
let you die in an emergency room with no doctors,
and blame everybody else.
Copyright © October 17, 2002 by Jack Blanchard. All rights reserved.
