Comments Elsewhere

Dave:

My opinion is that that these paramedical people give good care when rote memory thinking is all that is needed. Of course many of them develope tremendous skill with practice. A good physician is truly educated on a deep level. Not all people are suitable for this. I would not begrudge a doctor treating patients’ serious complex problems a broad education and deep fund of knowledge just to increase the supply. What a doctor doesn’t know can kill you.

Do you think “lay people” (to use the popular cant) are too stupid to figure out that complicated and dangerous procedures are best performed by a more thoroughly trained doctor? Too foolish to be able to figure out when it’s not really necessary, or not worth it under the circumstances, and when it might be better to see a nurse practitioner, midwife, or some other sort of trained healer who has had training other than the sort you get from a med school? Too childlike to be left alone to make these decisions about risk, cost, and reward for themselves, rather than having the government, at the behest of the Doctors’ Guild, force them to pay to see a doctor rather than someone with less medical training, “for their own good”?