In reading the several articles, op-eds, and columns I’ve read this morning, I notice a connecting thread among them. In one way or another they’re all about a hierarchy of values. That’s just a way of using big words to say that some things are more important than others. It’s a very basic idea. Even infants and dogs understand it.
That idea connects the cases of sexual abuse that have filled the news for the last month, politics, political affiliation, tax cuts, and balancing the budget.
Some have decided that nothing is more important than political affiliation. That’s leading them to draw distinctions between degrees of bad behavior which are at best convenient.
For my part nothing is more important than how you treat other people and that’s as true for me as for a politician. I think that the accomplishments of people in the light of their bad behavior should cause their accomplishments to be reconsidered rather than their behavior.
“For my part nothing is more important than how you treat other people and that’s as true for me as for a politician.â€
Do you want a nice surgeon, or a competent surgeon? The nice surgeon is facing 12 malpractice suits and just can’t figure out anatomy; and the competent surgeon is facing 12 sexual harassment suits but knows that your left is on his right.
You would like a nice, competent surgeon, but that isn’t an option, you have a choice of these two.
Perhaps the problem is that you only have a choice of these two, but no one seems to want to fix that, and you will need the surgery before that can happen.
You’re assuming that surgeons that treat people like trash are better surgeons. I think it’s probably the opposite. The swashbucklers have worse outcomes. I suspect that’s one of the reasons that female surgeons tend to have better outcomes than their male counterparts.
There are studies that have found that physicians who show non-verbal empathy are perceived both as more caring and more competent by their patients. At the very least that calls your premise into question.
And politicians aren’t surgeons. That’s the technocratic fantasy. We don’t elect based on competence to do anything but get elected.
Update
Here’s a study that might interest you:
or, in other words, treating patients with kindness and respect puts a surgeon at lower risk for a malpractice suit.
I’m assuming that basic competence, and basic niceness are not always correlated.
The vast majority of surgeons are reasonably competent, and reasonably good people (no better or worse than the rest of us). But, if you are limited to two, you may find that you are limited to two who you would ordinarily disqualify for different reasons.
The surgeon metaphor doesn’t quite work, since any surgeon who has predictably bad outcomes would lose their licensing, while any idiot can run for office.
There’s also the distinction that the terrible surgeon is going to kill or maim you, while the terrible public servent is going to cause a much less targeted harm.
And although we are straining the metaphor by even bringing this up…
The study that shows fewer malpractice suits among doctors who treat their patients well just shows that if you are pleasant, people give you the benefit of the doubt.
A more relevant study would be in medical outcomes, not lawsuits.
Also, I do assume that a party label is the equivalent of predictably bad outcomes.
Given the polarization of the country, particularly the shift of the Republican Party into crazy town, that compromise is considered bad, and most significant votes are party line votes, so I think that assumption holds up.
The days when most Senators showed independence are gone.
” treating patients with kindness and respect puts a surgeon at lower risk for a malpractice suit.”
Not a great metric. I think Gustopher is largely wrong, but your reasoning is not entirely correct. The 4 or 5 worst surgeons I have ever worked with (and I have seen a lot) were absolutely wonderful with their patients. They prayed with them. Lots of calls and attention. If you are nice to your patients, you usually don’t get sued, even if you are not especially competent. (To be sure, there is some correlation here, it just isn’t as strong as you might think. The praying thing really bothers me now. I just assume the surgeon is a quack if he asks to pray with the family. It is another thing if the family asks.)
The real problem is not so much nice vs not nice but ethical vs non-ethical. The non-ethical guy does a lot of not needed procedures, fleecing people out of money, and having needless complications and deaths. He cuts corners and has slightly worse outcomes, but not bad enough to get fired. The unethical guy develops his own medical device and uses it exclusively, even when he has the second worst outcomes in the state. Of course, he runs his own TV show and conspicuously donates to visible charities so that the locals love him.
Steve
“The non-ethical guy does a lot of not needed procedures, fleecing people out of money, and having needless complications and deaths. He cuts corners and has slightly worse outcomes, but not bad enough to get fired.”
I recall a doctor informing us that he would simply make up Obamacare revenue shortfalls with unneeded procedures. But I digress.
Why is it that fleecing patients is not a fireable offense?
“I recall a doctor informing us that he would simply make up Obamacare revenue shortfalls with unneeded procedures.”
You recall incorrectly. I said “we”, referring to doctors as a whole. I suppose I can be an egotistical assho*e like most docs, but I am not yet at the point of the royal we.
“Why is it that fleecing patients is not a fireable offense?”
1) There are a lot of gray areas in these decisions. A doc may be able to justify any individual case. They only get caught when overall utilization is looked at.
2) Administrators aren’t overly disposed to look too hard for over utilization.
3) Proceduralists often own their own facilities.
4) They often work at multiple places, so no one really knows their totals.
5) You would think that the insurance companies would want to catch and stop this. They don’t. No t100% sure why, but I do have theories. (Medicare does catch on to this if it is egregious. Not sure about the privates.)
Steve
Steve
Nice try, steve. No sale.
Maybe politics in your next life.