Dumb Doctors

Perhaps I expect too much from medical doctors. I've learned that most of them (I think) are just average intelligence people who just happened to get into medical school probably because their fathers were MDs or they had some other connection to get them into med school.

I'm reminded of this today when I try to have a discussion with our family doctor about impending changes in our nation's medical insurance structure. Dr. Smitherman makes a passing comment about people who do not have medical insurance, wherever they are he says, as if he wonders if there are such people who do not have medical insurance.

We hear all of the time that these people number 30 or 40 million. I wish I had the guts to say to him, "Why don't you spend some time at the ER at Shelby Baptist and I suspect you'd see people all day coming to the ER without insurance." But I did not say this. Or: You think maybe some of those 9% of Americans who are unemployed maybe don't have medical insurance. You think?"

Then there's his dreaded fear of the US turning into an England or Canada. Yes, I can understand his fear since it would remove the incentive for doctors to become venture capitalists.

I get a sense of the powerful and entrenced special interests in this country that make reform so difficult. Part of it is that so many doctors are just plain dumb.