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Oh, pack it, buddy. I made plenty of noise to many movers and shakers. Like most docs, I don’t belong to the AMA.

As for “we the Patients,” very few really value what doctors have to offer. The majority - and “The Greatest Generation” is as bad as every other - believe free health care, and my participation in it, is their inalienable right. Self absorption and entitlement rule in this country. In my current private practice, for instance, a great many have vacation homes, and very nice recent model cars, and go on a cruise or two each year, or a few weekends or weeks at Vail each winter, or a week at Disneyland with their kids every summer - and yet, they don’t want to pay co-pays for my services or their meds; they demand not only that I prescribe meds for them but that I am obligated to get them an endless supply of free samples; they demand that I not only diagnose and treat, but once I get them well they still demand that I have to write letters and fill out endless forms for free to get them time off work, some special companion animal, disability, or forgiveness of student loans, etc, etc, etc.

Did I mention “etc”?

In other, less affluent settings, I might treat, for instance, someone’s severely suicidal depression, but they don’t want to take life-saving meds because of some very minor side effect, or because - unlike the cocaine or marijuana or alcohol they pay significantly for and consume in sizable quantity - the meds are not “natural” and a $9 co-pay is a pharmaceutical company rip off.

My wife, working in the ER, is even more burned out with the population she sees now, even though it’s better than some other ones she’s worked with. Ungrateful, entitled, demanding. She’s constantly fearful of complaints and threats to her job and license should she not give in their demands, and the patients know it, and treat her accordingly. I know it too. Both she and I practice good medicine with all comers, and both she and I have had formal complaints against our licenses with our state boards - frivolous stuff, and neither of us have had any complaints that stuck, but there’s the hell of a several year investigation, and the need to hire attorneys, and the fact that the complaint, even if found totally groundless and dismissed, becomes a permanent part of our record which we then have to defend when we change jobs or get a license in a new state.

“Let the Truth come out.” You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth. My wife grew up in Third World poverty, idealizing the people of this country - she’s appalled by them. I went through my Rat Year at VMI, boot camp, and combat - yet my rotations in medical school, and especially my internal medicine internship, were many times more brutal and scarring than any of that. And for what? So people can demand I prescribe some Xanax to cushion the crashes after each ecstasy-filled Rave they attend, or so I can listen to threats against my license from parents incensed that I won’t fill out a four page form so their juvenile 28 year old borderline can have a ferret “companion animal” accompany her to her parole hearings, or so some sociopath, who scammed the system in order to serve his eighteen year prison term instead on a cushy forensic unit, could badly assault me, then file a complaint against my license via his patient advocate, saying I deserved the assault?

I think not. “You the People” can probably become doctors in a few weeks training under the new Federal healthcare system, and then YOU can erect billboards, and then YOU can put up with the entitlement society. YOU do it, buddy. Not me.

Doctors generally have kept their mouths shut publicly.Their voices were needed publicly to be the critical input while this thing was being stuffed through Congress. With them fighting for us and for themselves the public opposition would have been a lot louder and maybe a couple of Democrats would have worried a bit more about the next election.

That said, we are stuck with it now and I hope many of our physicians and specialists are already making arrangements to set up offshore in the Caribbean where they will find a welcoming environment. I do not hope that they will stay to take căre of us here.

If all the best doctors in the world practice in an American socialized system it won't make much difference to the patients. The Medical Professionals, will have to practice government medicine and their diagnoses will be second guessed by Party functionaries. I would rather know that if I can get offshore and if I can afford it, I can be treated than know that I can go to my local doctor for "free" and be better off talking to the Haitian voodoo who has quietly set up shop next to the Projects