Redeem Private Practice – Part II

From part one of Redeem Private Practice, it’s as if doctors are sellouts to the traditional medical system, and because of it there is no hope for a meaningful relationship between doctors and patients anymore.  The goal of this paper is to shake things up and get us all to think about how to repair our broken healthcare system.

Concerning human nature, when an economy becomes booming, the attitude of people changes from selfless to selfish.  As noted in part one, doctors appear selfish, money hungry, and aloof to the needs of patients. The other side of the story is the patient. Here again, when our economy becomes booming, patients become just as selfish as doctors, with no consideration of the welfare of their partners in healing.

Let’s take an example to show what these behaviors have been like recently in another line of work to illustrate what the distancing between doctors and patients has done to medicine. That comparison is police work. Riots have caused us to believe that cops are bad people and that our rights to zealous protest are violated by simply doing their jobs. Our politicians tell us the way to get them under control is to defund them and violently persecute them. When police are outnumbered by bad guys, there is no one there to protect you, and you can get seriously hurt or killed just trying to get around. The cops burn out, there are no ethics, and thus the onslaught of immorality and decay in our intellect. This is exactly what human nature and our stirred-up culture has done to medicine.

The point is that we the people are as culpable as doctors for the wayward circumstances we find ourselves in. Without objective analysis and evaluation of the issues we are witnessing in our broken medical system, we are blinded to the basics of kindness and caring in the medical system. The by-product of copious prosperity is thus deafness, dumbness, and blindness, to the point of adversity, misunderstandings, arguments, isolation, and violence. It’s also known as unbridled vice or sin. 

The great news is that we are coming to a turning point, because in America adversity points us toward virtue with guidance and help from our God.  Both doctors and patients are victims. We all have within us the capacity to become outraged at an imagined enemy (each other) and then create ways to be the victim, even though we are all insanely privileged to be US citizens. And then, by the propaganda and manipulation of our cunning and deceitful “leaders,” we all become slaves to a pathetic, evil, cold-hearted captor.  There is a lot to be said about Stockholm syndrome because we all want to be part of a winning team.

In a paper I wrote for California Globe called “Medi-Cal and its deleterious impact on California Medical care:  The Cure,” I describe five aspects of personal human health that must be in top notch order for our collective medical system to operate at top notch because the participation of healthy everybody gives rise to the best.  

They are physical, emotional, fiscal, civic, and Spiritual health. We each have the right, the opportunity, and responsibility to optimize our personal health in all these categories, but it takes work, and thus we must earn our good health. Then we can join forces, get involved, and develop a healthy medical system that will work for all of us, better than ever. One that is affordable, caring, safe, efficient, and God-centered and on the right track!

Undisturbed doctors have a unique perspective of human behavior, because attitude has a lot to do with our incentive to heal. Good doctors coach their patients to have good attitudes by obeying the covenants of the Hippocratic oath and by simple common sense. It is a pleasure to live in the covenants alongside the patient, because the reward for a doctor of a happy patient is invaluable. There is a practical streetwise freedom of interaction and healing that occurs in the well-executed doctor patient relationship.

A republic is a form of government in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, rather than being inherited, as in a monarchy.  America is unique in history, guided by Our God inspired constitution.  Our money, both coin and currency, has “In God We Trust” written on it.

There are three fundamental forces of our economy which have been neglected over the past 75-80 years, beginning with the baby-boomer generation. It was at the beginning of that era when the mindset of our citizens began to shift from prosperity to vice, hard work to leisure, truth to lies, God to goods, Spiritual to secular, high class to no class, discernment to brainwash, demonstrably true evidence to repeated assertions as substitutes for evidence, ethics to immorality, true news to fake news, and wealthy to broke. These three fundamental forces are fiscal responsibility, limited constitutional government, and free enterprise or capitalism (or in the medical field, private practice).

By forgetting these three forces of good and replacing them with bad habits, we have become a profoundly unhealthy nation. Thus, for an accounting of where we stand as a nation of doctors and patients today, we are:

1.) Fiscally irresponsible. 

2.) We face government run enterprise wherein the government owns us and tells us exactly what both doctors and patients need to do. There are no choices for your treatment options now. No informed consent. Our government is too big for its britches.

3.) The government has taken on unlimited, unbridled tyrannical power over us and completely severed the rule of law.  We doctors and patients are slaves to the government, as opposed to the government being our servants.  We have hit rock bottom and come to the turning point.  Because of the oppression, no one cares yet everyone longs for the freedom to heal without the hatred, war, and plague that is crushing us presently.

Limited government is the concept of restricting governmental power through a constitution, and rule of law is the principle that everyone, especially those in authority, is accountable to the law, ensuring that the government adheres to the limitations set by the constitution. Therefore, the rule of law is an essential component of a limited constitutional government ensuring that the government ‘s powers are limited and not arbitrary. A limited government is a necessary asset in a healthy private practice medical business system, but its role is that of a referee and not that of a participant. We must leave the quality and care and payment for the services up to the standards of the doctors and the patients.  

Regarding free enterprise or private practice, we must put on our common sense business hats and exercise our freedom of private business which is to organize and operate for profit in a competitive system without interference by government beyond regulation necessary to protect public interest and keep the national economy in balance, because we can handle it.  

Now couple limited constitutional government and free enterprise medicine (private practice) with all five aspects of your personal health. Examine your personal health in each category and see if there is room for improvement in any of them and then consider what you need to do to optimize that or those aspects.  Recognize that it will take hard work, persistence, determination and endurance, and that you must EARN this improvement.  The goal is to be firing at top notch of all five cylinders. Then, get involved in making American medicine healthy again.

For example, if I am fat and out of shape, stop eating so much and start exercising.  If I am emotional and operating on feelings as opposed to common sense, chill. If I am broke and living paycheck to paycheck, learn the basics of zero-sum budgeting and begin exercising those principles. Save, don’t spend. And finally, and most importantly, let’s dwell on Charlie Kirk’s assassination and sacrifice as a callout to speak up courageously for WHO we believe as Christians and why we are summoned to improve and exercise our Spiritual health. For you see, Spiritual health is the basis or guide for all the other four aspects of our whole personal health, so add reading your Bible, going to church and learning how to pray.   When you get into the groove of faith, apply Jesus to all the other aspects of your personal health and you will find that He’s got the answers to make you top notch in all of them.

The best news of all is that Turning Point USA is supercharging our free enterprise system starting now.  President Trump and his administration are bringing us peace, both here at home and around the world.  We find that peace is extremely good for business, and that’s the kind of peace we must now re-kindle between doctors and their patients, one doctor and one patient at a time.  And remember, “I hope so” doesn’t get it!  Where is your faith, man?

So voila! There is our new game plan. Let’s get together with Turning point USA and our youth, and President Trump and his amazing administration, and fix medicine!  That’s the only way, the only truth, and the only life, to get this job done.  All the glory to God!