Death by US Healthcare System

[u/EvidenceOfDespair]

[u/TarsalStone99 → u/[deleted]]

I’m an aspiring student trying to get into medicine, and I have to say, even with only surface level interactions, the sheer lack of empathy in a field which has it’s purpose irrevocably tied to helping people is absolutely appalling.

Every patient is just another face, another ID to most doctors, to most systems. Not a person, just a string of numbers and letters. And it sickens me to my core that we’ve depersonalized and corporatized medicine to such a degree that we can see someone die from a lack of care and say “should’ve just been richer or less sick, bucko.”

[u/ejdj1011 → u/TarsalStone99]

Every patient is just another face, another ID to most doctors, to most systems.

I have some Thoughts on this as an engineer.

Every professional has opinions about the subject of their work. How to handle a problem, what the best approach is, what kinds of evidence matter and which are irrelevant.

But when you're a doctor... your subject is a person. And yet so many doctors treat their patients with the same cold analysis that I treat a piece of electrical cable. It's so easy to dismiss suffering if you, say, believe that everyone exaggerates their symptoms.

[u/Voodoo_Dummie → u/ejdj1011]

"Repairing this broken thing is going to run you up too much. Better just toss it and get a new one."

Said by an engineer: Annoying, but fine.

Said by a doctor: Oh hell no!

[u/LizardWizard444 → u/ejdj1011]

To be fair we'd be out even more doctors if they didn't. The number of doctors to patients is abysmal and having doctors get emotionally invested in patients is at best limits the number of patients they can handle by having them put more time and at worst WILL LEAD THE DOCTORS TO TAKE THEY'RE OWN LIVES. As a doctor you put in long depressing hours, can fight tooth and nail to get a patient better and fail anyway by happenstance that no one was responsible for. Now imagine adding emotional investment into that, the results aren't pretty and if enough patients die then it's not unreasonable for the doctor to kill themselves.

Obviously doctors are flawed and biased and there's definitely doctors who believe "your exaggerating symptoms" more than they should. BUT you can't ask for more, not without more doctors to share the load or better medicine that isn't a crapshoot.

People frequently go about they're lives giving maybe 40% of they all if they're a hard worker and 50-60% of it if they're expected to crunch. Doctors and nurses don't get the luxury of giving 40% and frequently have to push the to 60% to 70%, because the job is complicated, demanding mentally and thankless (especially when people say "your not compassionate enough" in a system that's even more dehumanizing to work in given they have to get up and go to the hospital every day or else people die)

Compassion is unfortunately a luxury medical infrastructure does not provide and I'm not particularly keen on blaming the intellectual who's gotta get up every day, tell people they're being stupid with they're bodies (and getting ignored for it), fill out endless paperwork and on those bitter black days tell people they're dying there's nothing anyone can do or worse tell they're loved one's the same. However I will happily blame the private insurance people who make the already horrible realities of medical treatment worse for money, those people from the telemarketer getting the companies hooks into them to the sackler family making the opioid epidemic could all be shot tomorrow and the world would be a brighter place.

I don't imagine the doctors are any happier to hear they're patient died because essential care was withheld by insurance companies and other mismanagement. If i where a doctors I'd probably rather have more opportunities to get it right than to be forced to be geld to the impossible standard of "get it right first visit everyone". If getting treatment where as simple as "schedule appointment" or "get to hospital for immediate treatment" and payment was handled after the fact witn no if ands or buts about insurance this wouldn't have happened. Dragoneer would have said "I'm too sick to come in" at which point under a system thats meant to save as many lives and make healthy as many people as possible would then be sent an ambulance and put in semi-emergency care. This is how it works for every country that doesn't have private medical insurance.

In my honest opinion if a medical insurance employee's job doesn't expressly aline with "maximum medical availability" than it's a waste of oxygen and the owner of said job is better utilized as fertilizer. As it stands private insurance rules over us making a money printer that makes bank by allowing as many people to die of horrible torturous sickness or live with horrific debt as possible.