Sunday, November 9, 2008

How dare they!

I found this to be highly amusing. Public defenders in several states are suing to limit the number of cases they take on because of ethical concerns that quality of legal representation rendered is compromised by the current overwhelming workload. Can you believe it? How dare they. Here we have a highly educated professional class that provides a necessary and free service to the community and they expect to be able to deliver said service on their terms? It's just ghastly. Unimaginable. It reminds me of another professional class in a similar situation. I can't recall which one exactly. Not malpractice attorneys; they would never turn down a case with merit. Investment bankers? Plumbers? Country club golf pros? Hmmm. It's on the tip of my tongue. Some profession that provides an essential service to its community but is forced to see three times as many patients, I mean clients, in a day just to make ends meet, thereby spending less time than they would prefer with each individual and therefore relying more on specialists and proceduralists to "figure out" what the client's problem is which drives up the costs accrued....I wonder if the solution is to simply hire more foreign medical, I mean law school, graduates to compensate for the shortages. Surely we wouldn't entertain the unfathomable notion that if public defenders and primary care docs were better remunerated, the quality of work provided by each respective professional class might be better and, in the long run, cheaper.

6 comments:

rlbates said...

Very interesting indeed and well said.

Gary M. Levin said...

You couldn't possibly mean physicians, do you?

Anonymous said...

Public defenders theoretically serve those who cannot afford to pay a lawyer. This seems more like EMTALA, whereby hospital EDs can't turn patients away, regardless of their ability to pay. Why don't we get lawyers laid off from firms associated with those who caused the $700 billion bail out to serve some time in the public defender's office?

Sadly, the chronic underpayment of PCPs resulting in working absurd hours to make a decent living is less likely to be seen as an urgent problem than the lawyers' 'plight'.

Bongi said...

well written. i've just come out of an entire week where i averaged 2 hours of sleep a night. during the perpetual hours of being awake i was doing mundane things like saving the life of a guy that took a bullet through his liver, pancreas, spleen and kidney. oh you know, nothing too serious. very funny that they talk about ethical considerations yet i bet they get to sleep. maybe i should have said i was tired and the guy must find help elsewhere. no wait. there was no one else in the entire lowveld available to help him.

i don't want to sound like i'm wining but all i'm saying they (evil lawyers) have the privileged of so called ethical concerns yet in all reality there is no comparison between what they do and what we do. maybe the only way that the powers that be will see the need to stop screwing doctors is to pull a similar stunt and just not be available. maybe one of the politicians or a medical aid administrators could come out and do the splenectomy.

Jeffrey Parks MD FACS said...

Sounds like I need to buy you a stiff drink Bongi. Some day we'll commisserate over a couple of beers...

Anonymous said...

Me thinks you have characterized a key element of the moral fiber of the two professions in the context of donig public good
the physician "If not me, then who"
the attorney " if not me then, not my problem"
btw; the term FMG has been "caste" aside in favor of the term IMG-Wouldn't you agree that the term international has more cachet than foreign?