Physicians not included in health debate

TV's talking heads

Dr. Edward J. Volpintesta, MD, is a Family Practice physician in Bethel, Connecticut.

Misrepresentation and mayhem have become the hallmarks of the debate on health care. Specifically, the use of the term “death squad” as a substitute for “advance directives” is the worst example to yet appear. Advance directives are well-considered plans that patients make to provide doctors with guidelines on how aggressively they want to be treated should they become severely ill and their prognosis is dire. Every attempt is made to be sure that the plans are medically and legally correct. No patient ever gets the plug pulled just to save the health system money.

Those who bring “death squads” into the health debate are guilty of either political posturing or misinformed. Either way, the result is the same. Patients become frightened unnecessarily and discussion degenerates into chaos.

The fear conveyed by such distorted and untruthful information contained in terms like “death squads” could have been prevented if physicians were accorded their proper role in the health debate. The debates on TV rarely have physicians presenting their sides of the problem. Most of the health talk is by journalists who have little experience or knowledge of actually taking care of patients.

How can a journalist or a politician who has never had to take care of a patient with a ruptured appendix or a patient with life-threatening injuries suffered in a high-speed automobile accident even come close to knowing what is right or wrong with the health care system? Or never having had to fight with an insurer over the need for a CAT scan or having been faced with an unwarranted malpractice suit?

Until physicians are invited to play a bigger role in the health care discussions, misinformation and political posturing will continue to pollute the information that the public is supplied with.