OT-Doctors more dangerous than guns

[Dastook]

Statistics are used to tell us about all the things in our lives that threaten us; pollutants, tobacco, gas-guzzling cars and SUVs, ad nauseum. “Numbers don’t lie,â€

[homefront]

It is simply amazing how politicians (via the blessed media) can work the public into a terrified frenzy over firearms when cars, bathtubs, alcohol, electricity, ladders, power tools, pollution, etc., continue senseless killing unchallenged.

[gamekeeper]

Interesting post! But I got to thinking, it's hard to cover up an accidental killing with a firearm, But an accidental killing by a Doctor???????
Maybe Doctors are even more dangerous!

[Andrew]

It is simply amazing how politicians (via the blessed media) can work the public into a terrified frenzy over firearms when cars, bathtubs, alcohol, electricity, ladders, power tools, pollution, etc., continue senseless killing unchallenged.

That is sooo true. I have a hard time getting my Wife to listen to me cause she's more concerned with what the radio/tv/internet says.

[AJMD429]

Even within medicine, the media scares people of drugs that 1 out of 100,000 per year gets some deadly side effect, when the condition we are treating may kill 1 out of 100! It is because they sell the sensational, thrive on fear, and are basically liberal socialists who loathe 'corporations.'

Pediatricians tell their patients not to keep a gun in the house, EVEN IF IT IS LOCKED IN A SAFE, because the 18 month old will somehow 'get it' and shoot themself. THEN they turn around and recommend the family take bike outings together for fresh air.

Doesn't occur to these hypocrites that for every toddler killed by a bullet, dozens are killed by bicycles.

[C. Cash]

Good comments overall fellas. It helps politicians and the news media stay in business.

[Ysabel Kid]

Even within medicine, the media scares people of drugs that 1 out of 100,000 per year gets some deadly side effect, when the condition we are treating may kill 1 out of 100! It is because they sell the sensational, thrive on fear, and are basically liberal socialists who loathe 'corporations.'

Pediatricians tell their patients not to keep a gun in the house, EVEN IF IT IS LOCKED IN A SAFE, because the 18 month old will somehow 'get it' and shoot themself. THEN they turn around and recommend the family take bike outings together for fresh air.

Doesn't occur to these hypocrites that for every toddler killed by a bullet, dozens are killed by bicycles.

Our insurance changed the year my son was 1 and we had to go to a new pediatrician. We didn't want to - we really like his original doctor (and we are back with him). We're at the first meeting with the new doctor, and she asks if we have any guns in the house. I promptly - and forcefully - cut her off and told her that was none of her darn business. She started to mumble something about safety, and I jumped down her thought asking her if we knew the statistics on the top causes of accidental deaths for children in this country. She was shocked at being challenged, and just changed the subject. My wife was motified. Tough...

[OJ]

Remember, "Guns don't kill people, doctors do."



FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.



Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!

This has been posted a zillion times on other forums but I thought this forum had more class.

No source is ever credited for those fake numbers and, as reported, deaths due to "medical errors" are not all physician's fault but are spread out to nurses, pharmacists, aids, - even cleaning crews in hospitals as well as any one connected with health care - some deaths are even related to patients actions.

I spent a lot of money, worked hard to get through 4 years of pre-med, 4 rears of med school, and 5 years of post graduate training to become a surgeon. Having volunteered at age 17 for WW II and again for the Korean War, I was 34 years old before I even started making a living.

I was a surgeon nearly 40 years and, during that time, saved a lot of lives. I also worked 7 days per week and all holidays and nights saving those lives.

There are, no doubt, valid reasons to complain about your doctor but, there is absolutely NO EXCUSE TO CONTINUE TO PARROT THIS TOTALLY FALSE AND ABUSIVE NONSENSE CASTING ALL DOCTORS AS BEING BAD. THIS SHOULD BE STOPPED RIGHT NOW AND APOLOGIES OFFERED. THIS IS JUST CRUDE AND UNACCEPTABLE AND SERVES NO PURPOSE THAN TO OFFEND SOME OF US WHO HAVE SPENT MUCH OF OUR LIVES TAKING CARE OF OUR PATIENTS - PROVIDING THE BEST CARE POSSIBLE. Take your complaints about doctors to the doctors responsible.

When I started practice, we took care of the indigent for no charge. Unpaid doctor bills were a problem and, in calculating the financial worth of a physician for loans for such things as home loans, his accounts receivable were regarded by banks as being only 45% guaranteed collectible.

It was my choice of how to make a living and I can look back at my practice with much satisfaction. I certainly don't like many things going on in medicine today but much of the negatives can be attributed to government and insurance companies actions.

[Rimfire McNutjob]

OJ said ...

Take your complaints about doctors to the doctors responsible.

I agree that the given statistics are an unfair comparison. I more or less took the posting as a sign of how safe we really are with guns compared to the many other things that can kill us.

However, doctors are essentially a self-policing organization and the medical boards do a rather poor job of disciplining poor doctors ... it's more of a club where nobody wants to be too hard on anybody else because they have empathy over the difficulties of the profession. Like many things that perform poorly, they will eventually be replaced by a different system if they continue to stick their heads in the sand.

The current tort system and the excessive payouts by juries are an example of how the system will take it's toll, if not directly, then indirectly. Poor enforcement by doctors and hospitals to correct problems just cause those problems to be "corrected" in the court system ... which in turn drives malpractice rates up all around.

Still, by and large, we have the best medicine in the world. I live next door to a surgeon and the guy's life is horrendous ... he's working 11 hours a day and many weekends and holidays. His malpractice insurance is well over $100k annually now ... though I'm sure it differs by state and area of expertise.

It's unfortunate to think that our system, flawed though it may be, is about to go away in favor of the socialized systems of Canada or Great Britain. When our system does go ... it will ripple through all of those other societies. The money we pour into medicine pays for a lot of advances that would otherwise have come decades later or not at all. If Nancy Pelosi really cared "about the children" then she should think long and hard about the proposals that will inevitably be coming down the pipe.

[gamekeeper]

OJ,
I apologise for any offence to the medical profession. My comment was too flippant. I just ment that statistics are often used to make even good people look bad. As gun owners of course we all know that anyway.

[OJ]

However, doctors are essentially a self-policing organization and the medical boards do a rather poor job of disciplining poor doctors ... it's more of a club where nobody wants to be too hard on anybody else because they have empathy over the difficulties of the profession. Like many things that perform poorly, they will eventually be replaced by a different system if they continue to stick their heads in the sand.

That is a common misconception and, like much said, if said enough times, gets believed by mostly gullible persons. Doctors have the greatest interest in disciplining their bad apples - among other reasons, those are the ones driving up malpractice premium costs. That is not the greatest reason we discipline our bad apples though - it's because the actions and practices of any "bad apples" reflect badly on the majority of us who work as hard as we can to provide the best medical care we are able to. Believe me - practicing physicians have the highest reason to cut out the bad ones

I would reefer you to THE EXAMINER printed by the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners

http://www.dora.state.co.us/medical/newsletter.htm

Which posts all the disciplinary actions against out of line physicians.

Numbers of deaths due to "medical errors" are reported by the Centers for Disease Control. Numbers attributable to doctors are not available from any agency. Numbers reported by the CDC vary more that 100% but range from about 60,000 to 90,000 and have never been even close to those in that oft quoted post.

The CDC is the same government public health agency who was telling us a few years back that guns and "gun violence" were a virus and needed to be eradicated immediately. After one of their "experts" testified to that here, I wrote the following letter to our local newspaper.



Tell it to The Gazette
PO Box 1779
Colorado Springs, CO 80901

Editors:

Public Health doctors tell us we should regard guns as “virusesâ€

[Rimfire McNutjob]

Nice read on the Examiner website. As a "gullible person", I certainly hope I get a Letter of Admonition the next time I kill someone through negligence. That's some powerful corrective action there. Nothing like a Letter of Admonition in lieu of jail time to set someone straight.

When I speak of "self policing" I'm also considering the common practice whereby other physicians let slide the acts of the incompetent physicians when they witness them. After all, the other guy did his many years in school too and he should get a break ... right? If I screw up in front of my peers I wouldn't want them to turn me in either so I should just keep quiet when I see something.

The fact is, many times only another doctor recognizes malpractice when it occurs as they are in the best position to both witness and to judge such.
If they were dealing with it internally as well as they should be and as you suggest in your posting, the system would not be in as a large a legal mess as it is. Yet, the fact that lawyers exhibit the same behavior vis-a-vis "professional courtesy" probably disgusts these same doctors.

As it stands though ... rising lawsuits and awards followed by rising insurance followed by rising costs passed on to their patients is about to boil over in this country and a lot of people who spent a lot of time and money on school are about to get the short end of a very big stick handed to them by the public / voters.

The vast majority of doctors are fine upstanding people and I would say that compared to the general population the percentage of bad apples is lower. However, I don't think it's quite as low as the list in the Examiner. Many of the actions listed were even noted as non-disciplinary. And I would hazard a guess that many of the actions in the Examiner were the result of complaints filed by patients or their lawyers ... not by other doctors if any at all.

How many surgeons or nurses witnessed incompetence in an operating room and reported it do you think? Maybe one or two in the last few years in Colorado? Compare that to the probable number of settlements or verdicts handed to patients over the last couple of years in Colorado for botched treatments.

Frankly, if the doctors were as smart as they should be, they'd have formed cooperatives and partnered up with lawyers in their jurisdictions to pay tribute to the lawyers for less than the cost of their malpractice insurance. Let me relate this to you in an example. Many large corporations send menial but highly lucrative work to ALL of the larger and more reputable law firms in their states and beyond. When someone is wronged by said corporation and goes looking for a lawyer to take up their case, they get rejected by all of the largest and most reputable under the premise of "conflict of interest" because the large corporation is already their client. See how that works? My company does it. So do many others. If doctors joined that club, they could avoid many costly lawsuits while continuing to enjoy the relative immunity brought through their existing self-policing arrangement.

[OJ]

Nice read on the Examiner website. As a "gullible person", I certainly hope I get a Letter of Admonition the next time I kill someone through negligence. That's some powerful corrective action there. Nothing like a Letter of Admonition in lieu of jail time to set someone straight.

When I speak of "self policing" I'm also considering the common practice whereby other physicians let slide the acts of the incompetent physicians when they witness them. After all, the other guy did his many years in school too and he should get a break ... right? If I screw up in front of my peers I wouldn't want them to turn me in either so I should just keep quiet when I see something.

The fact is, many times only another doctor recognizes malpractice when it occurs as they are in the best position to both witness and to judge such.
If they were dealing with it internally as well as they should be and as you suggest in your posting, the system would not be in as a large a legal mess as it is. Yet, the fact that lawyers exhibit the same behavior vis-a-vis "professional courtesy" probably disgusts these same doctors.

As it stands though ... rising lawsuits and awards followed by rising insurance followed by rising costs passed on to their patients is about to boil over in this country and a lot of people who spent a lot of time and money on school are about to get the short end of a very big stick handed to them by the public / voters.

The vast majority of doctors are fine upstanding people and I would say that compared to the general population the percentage of bad apples is lower. However, I don't think it's quite as low as the list in the Examiner. Many of the actions listed were even noted as non-disciplinary. And I would hazard a guess that many of the actions in the Examiner were the result of complaints filed by patients or their lawyers ... not by other doctors if any at all.

How many surgeons or nurses witnessed incompetence in an operating room and reported it do you think? Maybe one or two in the last few years in Colorado? Compare that to the probable number of settlements or verdicts handed to patients over the last couple of years in Colorado for botched treatments.

Frankly, if the doctors were as smart as they should be, they'd have formed cooperatives and partnered up with lawyers in their jurisdictions to pay tribute to the lawyers for less than the cost of their malpractice insurance. Let me relate this to you in an example. Many large corporations send menial but highly lucrative work to ALL of the larger and more reputable law firms in their states and beyond. When someone is wronged by said corporation and goes looking for a lawyer to take up their case, they get rejected by all of the largest and most reputable under the premise of "conflict of interest" because the large corporation is already their client. See how that works? My company does it. So do many others. If doctors joined that club, they could avoid many costly lawsuits while continuing to enjoy the relative immunity brought through their existing self-policing arrangement.

I suggest you get someone to read the Examiner for you if that's all you gleaned from it. That examiner comes out at least twice per year and there are usually 40 or 50 cases of actions (some very serious) taken in response to complaints of patients or other physicians - a long way from the "one or two in the past few years" as you accuse us of. In fact, of the some twenty (20) physicians listed (on just the first page) being disciplined, eight (8) involved either revocation of license to practice or imposed severe restrictions on their practice with close supervision if they continues to practice - and that's just the first page of more than five (5) pages of reports of actions of the board against physicians. Also see the article "PROFESSIONALISM AND THE BOARD OF MEDICAL EXAMINERS"
By Jandel T. Allen-Davis, MD, Member, Colorado State Board of Medical Examiners

Read some of the back issues also and you will find "admonitions" are reserved for offenses not involving any injury or serious problem. If you read far enough, you'll find out there are many license suspensions and revocations for serious violations, five year probations with required even daily supervision. That info is also transmitted to any other state licensing that physician.

Make no mistake, no problems in the operating room goes unreported - first to the surgical committee, then to the Medical Examiners Board as well as local and state societies. How do you think physicians with drug or alcohol problems get reported - I can assure you it's by other physicians over 95% of the time.

I won't even address your suggestion doctors and lawyers join to solve malpractice problems - maybe that works for your business but, I can assure you, no way would it work for us.

This is getting ugly when you state, "If doctors were as smart as they should be" - looks like you could get rich telling doctors how to avoid malpractice problems. I can assure you this has been addressed by large numbers of very intelligent people - doctors and others. If your solution is so good, why don't you sell it on the market. One thing's for sure, if such worked, it would have been implemented decades ago.

Perhaps we could get back to lever guns and avoid personal attacks that generalize and represent biased feelings by rare (fortunately) individuals on this forum - even treat each other with common courtesy.

[bunklocoempire]

OJ, the Docs/Guns doesn't register with me because we have the 2nd Ammendment, glad you spoke up. I would really appreciate it if you could go into a little more detail as far as government and insurance company actions for the good of the group here. It'd be educational to have Doctor explain how it works, who benifits, why, etc. here or another thread. If your so inclined.

OJ wrote:

I certainly don't like many things going on in medicine today but much of the negatives can be attributed to government and insurance companies actions.

Thanks, Bunkloco

[Old Ironsights]

OJ, I totally agree with you...

OTOH, I do think that the comparison, based on bogus, but close enough, data does serve to make a point.

That is, Guns are no more a "problem" than doctors are.

In no way did or would I ever read such an article/juxtaposition as an inditement against physicians, but as it was intended - to show that causality is never as simple as is shown in the media.

My 2p. anyway...

[Rimfire McNutjob]

I agree with you on the leverguns topics. But let's face it, you labeled me as a "mostly gullible person" in a prior post and are thus not without blame here.

For you to suggest that "no problems in the operating room goes unreported" is being a bit disingenuous don't you think? That "no" implies a 100% accuracy of statement does it not?

I'm not saying the problem is easily solved ... but I am saying that if doctors don't solve it then politicians and lawyers will solve it for them. And they'll do it their way where doctors and patients will lose and lawyers and politicians (and their insurance company patrons) will win.

That "system" of retaining law firms is a common practice in Fortune 500 companies. Is it right? Not in my opinion. Does it stave off lawsuits in many cases and help them win in the war for the almighty dollar at the expense of an individual's rights ... probably. It's an example of a legal system twisted up by greed ... much like medical malpractice.

[OJ]

OJ, the Docs/Guns doesn't register with me because we have the 2nd Ammendment, glad you spoke up. I would really appreciate it if you could go into a little more detail as far as government and insurance company actions for the good of the group here. It'd be educational to have Doctor explain how it works, who benifits, why, etc. here or another thread. If your so inclined.

OJ wrote:

I certainly don't like many things going on in medicine today but much of the negatives can be attributed to government and insurance companies actions.

Thanks, Bunkloco

I sure would be glad to if I could but I've been retired 15 years now and things have changed a lot. Over the past six or seven years, congress has reduced the fees paid to doctors an average of 4-5% per year - meanwhile, cost of running an office and paying employees goes up with inflation every year. It was scheduled to be a 10% reduction this year but our legislators relented and raised fees 1.5% - big deal.

I'm on the other side of the desk now and I carry my own BC/BS insurance which I pay commercial premiums for - my wife isn't old enough to be on medicare. However, when we have any medical expense - and I've had more in the past six months than I did the previous 80 yeaars, it turns out that BC/BS pays the regular fees for my wife but has worked it out with congress that they only pay medicare level fees for me despite the fact I pay the same prenium.

For you to suggest that "no problems in the operating room goes unreported" is being a bit disingenuous don't you think? That "no" implies a 100% accuracy of statement does it not?

From the tone of your writing, I doubt I'll convince you but, it's as close to 100% as anything in life gets. Among otther things, it might surprise you to know how competitive surgery is and how not all surgeons are liked by all nurses but, believe me, some surgeons/nurses have no qualms about reporting - justified or not -everything the least bit out of line is reviewed at least monthly by tthe surgical committee of the hospital and evaluated for validity.

The original post that started this thread is prime evidence that "There are lies, darn lies, and statistics".

I've seen that identical post dozens of times on other gun forums and have requested the ones submitting the post to furnish us with a reference source for those accusations that we could look up and confirm. If we make any claim in medical literature, we are required to give the source of that info so all can look it up and confirm it or not. Clearly, there is no basis in fact for that post and, while it may seem funny to the one posting it, it is not funny to those of us who have dedicated our lived to medicine and patient care.

On a liighter note, if you were a Marine in 1950 and were told this fuzzy faced kid was your Battallion Surgeon, would you have felt confident or would it just have given you just another reason to try to avoid getting wounded?



I really haven't changed much - as you can see.

[Rimfire McNutjob]

No, you won't convince me about that being close to 100%. And my proposed solution was, of course, rhetorical.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I was on the wrong end of the knife once and enjoyed a 3 week Versed induced coma while I fought off sepsis manifested via MRSA and various strains of streptococcus. My surgeon had 3 of us in ICU at the time ... all septic after surgeries performed by him. I am the only one that survived.

Luckily, which is a horrible thing to say, my surgeon had a pulmonary embolism after I was about two weeks in. Another surgeon took over and finally performed a tracheotomy ... I had been on a ventilator for two and a half weeks. The new surgeon also changed out my central line ... which the MRSA had apparently colonized and was thus preventing me from winning the battle. Of course, I like to imagine that the stress of having so many patients in ICU fighting for their lives was the cause of his embolism. Not necessarily that he cared about them, rather in his case I think the thought of the simultaneous legal onslaught was unnerving to him.

When the embolism hit him, he didn't check himself into the hospital in which we were all suffering. He had himself airlifted to another (presumably better) hospital about 100 miles away. Naturally, he survived. He probably gave himself a nice dose of Heparin while he waited for his chopper to arrive on the roof.

As a surgeon, you can probably guess that I had pneumonia and a collapsed lung from being on the ventilator so long. Probably the least of my worries at the time seeing as my chart was clearly annotated as CTD.

This guy was in his early 50's at the time and finally had his license revoked about 5 years later. Still, I believe he was perhaps allowed to practice in the state quite a bit longer than he should have been.

The doctor and hospital were, of course, paid over $600k for all of that critical care. What I got, from the improper and/or inconsistent application of those wonderful inflatable leg booties, was DVTs in both legs and a lifetime subscription to the Coumadin club. I went in for surgery in early September, woke up in October, got out of the place in late October, and got my abdominal cavity closed around Christmas (elsewhere). I could have maintained my swimming pool for the rest of my life with the amount of Dacon's solution I used. (hyperbole, ignore as needed)

And no, I did not sue.

I still think we have the best system in the world. But I hope you'll excuse me if I think that your 100% error reporting stipulation doesn't quite pass the smell test.

While you have may have dedicated your life to medicine and patient care, there are more than a few out there that have dedicated their lives to a somewhat lesser target ... to include their beach houses, cars, etc.

I have no doubt that you would act as honorably as you describe. Your generation as a whole, and certainly any former Marines, carry themselves with a bit more integrity and honor than is common in society today ... my opinion, nothing more. (Plus, you hang out on the Leverguns forum.) You probably also associate with other doctors of your caliber and integrity ... as is natural. I am, unfortunately, not willing to associate these attributes with all of todays doctors when it comes time to come clean on some of the issues.

Concerning your BC/BS and Medicare comment ...

What many people don't realize is that most doctors, in my area anyway, are being forced to take compensation for services today that are not even at Medicare levels. Today, many doctors have to live with reimbursement rates that are a percentage of Medicare payment levels. Most often I believe 80% but sometimes 70% as well. Though the insurance companies like to call them "negotiated rates", I think many can plainly see that it's a bit of a one sided negotiation. Seeing patients on Medicare is actually more profitable for these doctors than seeing patients on private insurance plans in many cases. This seems a bit of an odd situation to me anyway.

Finally ...

If I were in a room with 10 doctors and 10 lawyers and told that only 10 could survive, I assure you the legal system (in that room) would suffer a catastrophic setback. Though I empathize with doctors, I'm not going to take everything they say at face value anymore. Sure, the posted numbers are highly misleading ... no argument. As I originally said, I took it more as a testament to our safe possession of firearms rather than an attack on doctors per se. But, as you can tell, I'm not particularly willing to let physicians off the hook for the ills that affect our current healthcare system either.

[bunklocoempire]

OJ wrote:

On a liighter note, if you were a Marine in 1950 and were told this fuzzy faced kid was your Battallion Surgeon, would you have felt confident or would it just have given you just another reason to try to avoid getting wounded?

! ! !

Appreciate the info, glad your retired and hope your enjoying it.

Thanks, Bunkloco

[OJ]

This is the closest thing I could find on Health and Human services

The IOM’s release of To Err is Human brought medical errors and patient safety the attention it has long needed but never had. The information presented in the report is not new. Indeed, many studies, some as early as the 1960s, showed that patients were frequently injured by the same medical care that was intended to help them (Schimmel, 1964). While evidence of medical error has existed for some time, the report succeeded in capturing the public’s attention by revealing the magnitude of this pervasive problem and presenting it in a uniquely compelling fashion. The IOM estimates that medical errors cause between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths annually in the United States.

Note the medical errors does not attribute all to physicians but include all from physicians to hospital personnel, pharmacists, nurses & aids and all involved in health care.

Note also there is no reference to the number of physicians and note the difference in numbers claimed in the original post.

A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000;

(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000;

(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.

- Statistics courtesy U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services.

This all too often "quoted" post is an outright lie and should die a natural death - particularly among those of us who are bonded together by our love of guns and shooting. We have enough enemies who spread anti-gun falsehoods against us and we shouldn't be spreading false information casting our members in an undeserved bad light .