The Next Generation
I went to law school with the goal of being part of the tort reform movement. I always figured that without restraints, lawyers would be the ones to destroy the world, particularly as it relates to healthcare. Some examples: surging rates on malpractice insurance act as a tax on everything; defensive medicine compels doctors to assign patients useless, distressing, and expensive tests; the risk of liability stifles innovation.
Well, let’s be honest about what has happened over the last couple years: doctors destroyed the world themselves.
The facts are not in dispute. Medical professionals encouraged governments to lock healthy people in their homes, defying 100 years of pandemic planning (Rule #1: Don’t cause panic). The resulting madcap money printing has imposed a stupendous inflation tax on everything. There’s also a literal covid tax as part of your medical bill now—the cost of pointless PPE passed on to you. Travelers, students, and employees must participate in a global testing regime that is as costly as it is useless. Innovation has been crushed by a singular research and funding focus on a virus that is harmless to virtually everyone. Besides, only a moonshot cure can beat a virus with widespread animal reservoirs and rapid mutation.
I was taught in religious school that the reason God had Moses wander around the desert for 40 years was to allow the generations traumatized by slavery to die off before entering the Promised Land. Only young people with a pure heart would be allowed in. For the health care profession, perhaps the only way out of the current meta crisis—prescription pad medicine, political and regulatory capture, resistance to new ideas—is for the current generation to age out of their jobs. This cohort came of age trusting the system and achieved financial and career success inside the system. We must rely on the next generation of our best and brightest to reverse course.
This could work, right?
