"It’s easy to find fault with both doctors and patients in such stories, but in many ways all the parties are simply victims of a larger system that encourages excessive treatment."
I strongly disagree with this part. Before patients become patients, the vast majority of us have no interaction with the health care industry and certainly no significant capability to influence it. Doctors, on the other hand, spend their adult lives working as professionals in the industry. To say that they, as a group, are anything but complicit is wrong.
Consider the "Fuck passwords" article[1] that's on the HN front page now. As a programmer who has dealt with passwords, the sad state of authentication is, in part, my fault. I could make the same excuse, "Well, the users don't want long passwords, and Facebook and G+ are part of the problem, and blah blah. I'm a victim of a larger system" That would be lame.
Like the doctors, I'm one of the professionals in the field, so it's my responsibility.
I strongly disagree with this part. Before patients become patients, the vast majority of us have no interaction with the health care industry and certainly no significant capability to influence it. Doctors, on the other hand, spend their adult lives working as professionals in the industry. To say that they, as a group, are anything but complicit is wrong.
Consider the "Fuck passwords" article[1] that's on the HN front page now. As a programmer who has dealt with passwords, the sad state of authentication is, in part, my fault. I could make the same excuse, "Well, the users don't want long passwords, and Facebook and G+ are part of the problem, and blah blah. I'm a victim of a larger system" That would be lame.
Like the doctors, I'm one of the professionals in the field, so it's my responsibility.
[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3313790