Outside Counsel

Timothy Noah has always written well: the recent death of his wife has charged his writing with a new energy-- perhaps anger?-- that makes what he is putting down more persuasive and compelling than ever before. It is certainly true that we have socialized medicine in the US -- it is a tiered system, with Senators and Congresspersons enjoying the best care, and veterans receiving the more mainstream care, but as Noah argues in this piece, the care that patients in the socialized system get is far better than what the rest of us are getting. "There are many reasons why this is so. One reason, Longman explains, is that people don't shuffle in and out of the VA system the way they shuffle in and out of private health care plans, either because they change jobs or because their employer decides to do business with a different insurance company. Another reason is that the doctors are salaried, and therefore lack any conceivable financial interest in subjecting a patient to avoidable medical procedures. But the main reason the VA hospitals are doing especially well these days is that they have adopted the same modern information technologies that have been embraced by every other sector of the economy."

I'm sorry for Noah's loss, but he is saying a lot of things that need to be said. The medical profession is just about the least transparent industry I can think of-- and every time the government tries to get a handle on it, the wizards that run it fill the room with more smoke. In a way I am at a loss as to how we can let ourselves keep getting gulled, but in another way I am not-- as a lawyer, I am always on the razor's edge of being declined as a patient, as are my family. Indeed, when we moved to the Queen City of the Lakes, our children's pediatrician thoughtfully transferred our daughters' records to their new doctor with a note on the top in red marker: "Parents Are Both Lawyers". It was underlined, but I don't recall if there were exclamation marks. Anytime healthcare reform is discussed it seems as though there is a similar thinly veiled threat: "You seem to be pretty healthy: it'd be a shame if you mysteriously developed flu-like symptoms."