I’m in a neighborhood of elderly folks, and I don’t punch a clock so I’m available to take people to doctor appointments and sit with them. I hear a lot.
Medicine is now as impersonal as the automat. Doctors overbook and overcharge, and whenever possible they avoid patients. Physician assistants and nurses are now the ones seeing patients. And since covid, they don’t want to see patients either.
Meanwhile a self-paying walk-in like me would part with maybe $30 for the same ride on the assembly line that insurance is billed $100+ for.
Personal friends in the medical field tell me that “all” doctors now are basically cogs in the machine. There’s not enough self-paying patients to keep a doctor in business.
They comply with the requirements of the insurance behemoth, and they don’t risk their careers on frivolous pursuits like independent thinking. They don’t physically touch patients if they can avoid it — let some nurse look in eyes and ears. Machines and blood labs will diagnose; doctors will read printouts.
All that’s missing in the picture now, is the bar code on the neck, the microchip in the head. Coming soon.
“They don’t physically touch patients if they can avoid it — let some nurse look in eyes and ears. Machines and blood labs will diagnose; doctors will read printouts.”
Geez, my Doctors aren’t like that. I like all of my doctors, but I always research the ones I go to before I choose one. I always ask my primary Doc for multiple choices when he is referring me to a specialist, so that I can Google them and make the best pick based on that research. So far it has worked very well for me.
I guess I don’t have quite as bleak an outlook as to doctors as you do. Mine have gotten me through a few rather bad patches and thus I’m alive to type this comment. Bless their souls.