The U.S. Medical Care Boondoggle Depends On Hookwinking The Physicians

James Gaulte | Retired Doc's Thoughts | June 7, 2013

The terms hoodwink and boondoggle are so appropriate. My comments here were inspired in large measure by Dr Michel Accad's Jan 2009 insightful  blog entry from which I quote:

'... beyond ignoring the obvious tension between the individual and the group,hoodwinking physicians into practicing "population medicine" is of course the essential  means to confuse practitioners into thoughtlessly carrying out sweeping intervention whose primary benefit is the profit of third parties."
to this I add the profit-not necessarily in monetary terms-of the academics whose writings give a scholarly veneer to this monumental hoodwinking enterprise.

In this regard several terms and concepts are important:  population medicine, physicians as stewards of finite resources,cost  effectiveness research and  high value care. The key idea is to establish the notion that medical resources is a collectively owned resource and all are entitled to it by virtue of their existence. From this follows that the  utility of the aggregate matters and not that of the individual and that  some one has to manage this collectively owned resource and the elite medical progressives are the self nominated candidates for that job.