So you did a little bit of research did ya?

I know, I know.  It has been a while.  My schedule has been busy and I have started a new study method that does not enable procrastination (i.e. writing in this blog).  It keeps me accountable and it keeps me focused and my grades have been getting better.  Maybe I can improve my "nowhere-to-go-but-up" class ranking.  It is the miracle method.  I am working on a patent for it, but if you are interested I will sell it to you (I have lots and lots of loans to pay off).  Just let me know.

A lot has gone on since the last time I posted.  I feel like I am getting more and more disillusioned to medicine.  The MBA classes certainly don't help with that.  It isn't necessarily a bad thing, BUT it is discouraging.  So I guess it might be a bad thing.  I attended a talk by someone from this organization.  It was severely slanted to the point that he couldn't tell us the downside of a single-payer system.  Wow.  The perfect system has been found.  WRONG.  Check it.  Let's say you are a 60 year old who has taken good care of yourself.  You have eaten well, exercise, etc.  Right now, you have private insurance because you worked for it and spent money on it.  Now lets say you have been having some heart trouble and need a heart surgery.  DONE.  Now lets say you and the rest of the nation are on the single payer insurance plan.  Uncle sam is running the show.  Now you need that same surgery, but guess what, so does a 40 year old man who has eaten his way into his condition while smoking, and on top of that, who didn't have insurance before.  Who gets the surgery?  Uncle sam would say the other dude gets it, but you can try to wait it out until you move up in line.  You see, health care will ALWAYS be rationed in some form.  Right now it is by ability to pay.  Under a single payer system it will be by age, or by wait time (i.e. wait months to years for a treatment/procedure you could have had in days with private insurance).  And don't think Uncle Sam wont stick it to the doctors through payments.  I agree that costs are out of control, but I do not agree a single payer system is the answer.  And neither is cutting physician salaries.

We ended cardiopulmonary and are now 2.5 weeks deep in GI.  This section is nothing special.  In fact, med school itself has been nothing special.  Pretty boring if you ask me, and if it weren't for some of the people in my class I would have no source of entertainment at school.  Take for instance the pissing contest that I witnessed the other week.  Med student A presents research in a very un-humble way to say the least.  Surprised he doesn't want to be called Dr. A already.  I was waiting for him to tell us how much he bench presses, how many beers he can chug, and how many chicks he gets, but he must have run out of time.  So at the end of his talk, he takes questions.  Professor B, who has is all ego as well, approaches the mic.  Apparently Dr. B doesn't take too kindly to student A thinking he is all awesome and stuff when in reality all he did was use trigonometry.  So Dr. B proceeds to ask student A about certain conditions in medicine relating to student A's topic.  When student A cannot answer because student A is student A and not Dr. A, Dr. B shakes his head all the way back to his seat.  I got a good chuckle.  It was indeed unprofessional for Dr. B to do that, but I appreciated him putting student A in his place.  That was the second hardest I have laughed in the last few weeks, second only to this pic which I stumbled upon the other day.  Best ab workout I have gotten in a long time.

Finally, for the answer to the bioethics question from a few posts back.  The answer would be to do NOTHING with the info you have obtained.  Here is why.  Your colleague contacted you and since he was under confidentiality, you could not say anything.  Had you said anything, you would have broken the law by betraying a privileged communication between a lawyer and his client.  It is a fundamental principle of American law that a person must be able to go to a lawyer without fear it will get them into trouble or that the lawyer will betray their secret.  Plus, if you had come forward, you would have lit a chain of events that would have included re-examining every case that examiner would have ever had a part in, inmates demanding to be re-tried and a whole slew of embarrassments for the public defenders and employees, not to mention the ramifications to you.  Politicians don't like to be proved wrong or be embarrassed.  Whether fair or not, that is the right thing to do according to a law school who was asked about said situation.  Crazy world, huh?