Bill is a family physician in a suburban town in Kansas. Bill is also a fictitious character in a short story meant to explain the nuanced effects of centralized healthcare on physicians’ conduct.
Bill works in a practice that comprises four other general practitioners. Some are now part time in the office and part time at the local hospital. Bill and another are full-time in the practice, but maintain privileges at the local hospital.
Bill went to his office five (5) days a week for 35 years. Like the movie “Ground Hog Day,” there wasn’t much change in Bill’s life and career. Of course, there were the occasional emergencies and weird diseases or anomalous genetic disorders. But there were no changes to Bill’s approach to medicine and patients. He followed tenets of good medical practice, ethics expressed in oaths, and duties codified or implied in law. He relied on his education, medical journal literature, and decades of experience practicing medicine in the local community.
THE ISSUE DESCENDS
When Bill began practicing, he met with patients one-on-one and listened to them explain their symptoms, while maintaining eye contact, and before he took notes or prescribed a treatment. Bill attentively listened to his patients.
In the past few years, Bill and all the doctors in the practice were pressured by “advances in medicine” to buy diagnostic software, services, and hardware (laptops). The laptops came attached to a small table with wheels to facilitate moving it among treatment rooms. The laptops were subscribed to a service that used algorithms to search and apply the latest literature. In other words, Bill typed in the symptoms as the patient told them to him. He no longer maintained eye contact with the patient as the patient described symptoms. After entering all the symptoms, the laptop would then display the possible diagnoses and government-recommended treatments.
Bill went to the office one Friday thinking about what he was going to do with his grandkids over the weekend. Should he take them water skiing, hike a local mountain, or teach them how to use his wood lathe in the basement? But fate collided with Bill this Friday and shook him to the deepest depths of his soul.
This one Friday, Bill had a patient in dire need of medical attention. He consulted the laptop god on the wheely table. id est, he typed in the symptoms and the laptop god told him the government-recommended treatment.
Bill disagreed with the treatment this day. The laptop told Bill to perform procedure X. Bill wanted to perform procedure Y.
Bill knew that procedure X, due to the local water supply components, carried a five percent (5%) chance that the patient would die within six (6) months. Bill also knew that procedure Y, having no interaction with the components in the local water supply, carried a one percent (1%) chance the patient would die within six (6) months.
Bill lamented because he performed the calculus of possible outcomes and realized that the central authority did not know the presence of elements in the local water supply where his patient lived. In fact, many of the central authority recommended treatments do not factor in differences in water, food, genetics, or other variables known to the wise, local physicians.
The calculus Bill employed involved his own fate in addition to the patient’s. Bill knew that if the patient did die within six (6) months from procedure X, then Bill would not be investigated by the state medical licensing board, the NGO medical certification boards, and would not be liable to lawsuit for malpractice. Bill also knew that if, in the one percent (1%) chance, the patient died from procedure Y, then his license and board certification would be in jeopardy, and he would be open to a malpractice lawsuit.
WHAT DID BILL DO?
Bill relented as predicted by Maslow. The much lower base level of safety, which includes employment, won Bill’s mind. The highest level of self-actualization, which includes morality, languished in Bill’s personal calculus.
Bill performed procedure X. He subconsciously placed his career over the patient’s life.
The patient survived past the six (6) month window, and with a few minor health complications for the rest of his life, which was shortened by 5 years.
Bill’s subconscious caused him to be distraught. He could not sleep at night and began frequently quarreling with his children and wife. During this time, Bill did not resolve his conduct with his conscience.
After speaking to a psychologist for two (2) years, Bill regained his good personality and familial relationships, and learned to forgive himself, promising to never bow down to government again in the treatment of patients.
FRANK
Bill ran into his med school roommate, Frank, at a conference; and they went out for a beer. Frank told Bill that he had the exact same experience as Bill up until the decision to perform procedure X or procedure Y.
Their experiences diverged at the choice of procedure. Frank also lamented the choice and performed the internal calculus.
Frank chose the moral procedure Y. Frank’s patient died in two (2) weeks. The patient was going to die no matter what due to a theretofore unknown heart condition. The medical examiner and all expert witnesses testified in support of Frank’s choices. However, since Frank opted for the non-government-recommended procedure, he was attacked by the state licensing board to be made an example of to all other doctors, who would dare to challenge the central authority. Frank’s license to practice medicine was forever stripped.
Interestingly, Frank’s family was closer than ever. Frank slept well at night and seemed happier than ever, though he had to take a job as VP of Marketing at a medical device manufacturer.
ECONOMICS
This story is just a fictional representation of a couple doctors and their interaction with government recommendations in treatment.
Even if Frank was not attacked and did not lose his license to practice, there would still be a negative externality of broken morality.
Though Bill’s patient survived in the story, there are five percent (5%) of patients who do not survive in that hypothetical situation.
For example, consider that 100,000 family physicians in the United States may face such a scenario of conflict between best practices and government-recommended practices about ten times (10X) per year. That’s one million (1M) encounters. If the choice were always made to perform the government recommendation, then using the one percent (1%) versus five percent (5%) model above, there are four percent (4%) more people who would die from the government-recommended procedure. Four percent (4%) of 1M is forty thousand (40,000) excess people dying because doctors follow the central authority due to coercion from fear of administrative state control over their employment, welfare, and ability to earn a living.
This simple example is actually very conservative in numbers. The truth and facts of our current societal state is far worse than this example.
Dr. Meryl Nass, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Scott Jensen, Dr. Ira Bernstein, Dr. Daniel Nagase, Dr. Patrick Phillips, Dr. Mel Bruchet, and many other doctors were used by government as very public examples to not go against government-recommended treatment.
Dr. Bruchet was dragged from his home during dinner and arrested by police at eighty (80) years old. He was drugged and forced into a psychiatric hospital. Why? Dr. Bruchet spoke against the Canadian government medical recommendations.
This story is not meant to be an economics paper, but it should be very clear what happens with centralization of functions in most systems, including health care systems.
The losses occur at the margins. The system is centrally tuned and optimized for the bulk, the normal, the frequent. If people have symptoms or injuries that are outside the mainstream, then misdiagnoses by the central processing authority (the laptop god on the wheely table) will occur at the margins and people will die.
Since the cover-up of covid vaccine deaths has occurred en masse since the roll-out began, most doctors chose the second level of Maslow’s hierarchy over the top-level morality. They kept quiet about the death and maim from covid vaccines.
Deaths from covid vaccines are well over 300,000 in the United States and growing as longer term causes such as lymph node cancer and bone marrow cancer continue to climb.
The society and practices of health care professionals are susceptible to behavior modifications. The CARES Act is nothing more than an intended behavior modification.
Walter E. Williams is known to say, “If you subsidize something, you will get more of it.”
“COVID-19” death certifications were subsidized
Mechanically ventilating patients was subsidized
Prescription of Remdesivir was subsidized
Evidence from about one million Massachusetts and Minnesota death certificates tells the story of excess deaths due to covid vaccines and covid protocols.
Ed Dowd’s and Josh Stirling’s work in insurance data corroborates the death certificate trends from Massachusetts and Minnesota. Higher level data corroborates granular data and individual record inspection. The truth is here. Facts depicting massive deaths from vaccination are irrefutable.
The pandemic is moral, not viral.
I agree. I actually know of a small town physician who had this moral choice and decided to go withthe state option regarding treatment. However, when we refused that treatment, having done research, he simply disappeared from being available to my mother who needed it. We read more, went with instinct and she's fine today at 80 years old. I bet he has a bit of trouble sleeping at night. I respected him before... not now, and I let him see it. No words, just disapproval. Sell-outs...both financially and morally. God don't like ugly.
What a fantastic depiction of the real tragedy of the Great Covid Dumpster Fire! Kudos! The negative outcomes occur at multiple levels and over long time horizons. Some people will be injured (and/or die) now, because of the covid vaccines. Some people will suffer complications and side effects so temporally distant as to obscure the fact that they too are vaccine injured. Some will appear no worse for wear. The bulk of people, the ones in the last two groups--and I selfishly admit that I hope this applies to my loved ones who fell for the scam--will get away clean, for now. The number of people in the last two groups, being so large in comparison to those who are obviously vaccine injured, will allow the same murderous scammers as killed the first group to do it all again later. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
As an aside, our primary care physician, a man we have known for 30+ years and been extremely happy with, uses one of those "wheely laptop tables." He is enough of a truth-teller that he admitted to me that he often finds himself having to at least ask patients if they want "the standard" recommendations. He knows that if he does not ask, someone will report him. "Standard of Care" is the buzzword they use. I call it, "one size fits all" and it's not medicine. At least a few doctors realize that.