Comments on: Over-medicated

By: dx

dx — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:06:09 +0000

guy – that’s a fair point; that paragraph could be a little clearer. But I think my prior comments speak directly to your concern.

By: guy

guy — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:40:55 +0000

if you don’t care how many doctors are in congress why is the first paragraph of your discusssion about how doctors are over represented in congress but lawyers which apparently are 33% of congress are not.

By: DX

DX — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:35:14 +0000

Jenga – as far as I can tell, being a physician is good training to determine health care policy only as much as being a botanist is good training to determine agricultural policy, or being a mechanical engineer is good training to determine transportation policy. You’d think it would help at least a little, but so far physicians’ leadership on health-care policy has gotten us nowhere.

Meanwhile, you’re still missing my point about proportionality. Burgess is arguing that more doctors legislating as doctors would be a good thing. I’m arguing that it’s generally a bad thing for legislators to act according to their own professional interests, whatever those interests. If lawyers are doing so, then yes, that’s a bad thing, too. But where health care reform is concerned, if it came down to the difference between lawyers’ and doctors’ professional interests, the people who actually use the system – people like me – would be roughly equally screwed.

So I’m not worried about proportions so much as legislators who claim they should be acting in anything other than the best interests of their constituents and the nation. Being a doctor may well help a legislator see that, but time and time again doctors have proven that their interests are far from coterminous with the interests of the nation as a whole.

By: jenga

jenga — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:14:46 +0000

So vice versa being a physician should be good training to determine healthcare policy then and that shouldn’t be surprising to you. I would be much more worried about a group that is represented at 100 times the population in a representative democracy than one with 10. There is 10 times the risk of malfeasence.

By: dx

dx — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:47:43 +0000

Jenga – 228 with law degrees, by my count, but is it surprising that a law degree turns out to be good training for being a law-maker? Re-read the post, especially the update. I don’t think doctors or lawyers should be legislating according to their narrow professional interests in the first place, which is what the WSJ article seems to suggest. Should lawyers as lawyers lead the debate? No. But if the people who have the best ideas about reform happen to be lawyers, then they should definitely be in charge.

By: jenga

jenga — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:23:47 +0000

There are approximately 200 lawyers out of 635 members of congress appoximately 31% of the representation. There are over 1.1 million lawyers out of a country of 300 million. So lawyers are 100 times as common in congress than in society. So they should lead the debate? Great post

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:06:25 +0000

Physicians are on the front-line of taking care of patients. They see first hand the problems of the system and have some insight into how things can be fixed. They are certainly more qualified based on experience alone than the other politicians in Congress who really have no idea how to fix things other than to legislate the government to over-regulate medicine. The more that politicians became involved in medicine versus physicians, especially since the 1960s, the worse the healthcare system has gotten in the United States. Take physicians out of the leadership in healthcare, and you get serious problems as evidenced by the current reality of healthcare in this country.