Re: the splendors of unsocialized medicine
From: Kent Paul Dolan (xanthian_at_well.com)
Date: 11/05/04
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Date: 5 Nov 2004 02:12:53 -0800
aldopignotti@yahoo.com (Aldo Pignotti) wrote:
> xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan) wrote:
>> This takes me back to my military days, where the
>> doctors, asked why they would work for 1/4th
>> their potential private practice income, to be
>> uniformed doctors instead, all, to a man and
>> woman, cited the mess into which private medical
>> practice in the US plunged physicians.
> Kent, you are a simple man. Doctors serve in the
> military largely because they have to. If you
> qualify, the military will pay for college and med
> school, the only requirement being that you serve
> some time (I think it's six years) in the military
> or become a doctor in an area where there's a
> shortage of doctors. Every now and then, someone
> tries to get out of the deal and it makes the
> papers.
Aldo, you are simpleton.
My SSBN Weapons Officer, LCDR Donald Latham, at the
end of his obligated service for _his_ training (as
a nuclear certified power plant engineer, with
additional training in management of nuclear
weapons), didn't want to deal with dealing death any
more, he wanted to be a doctor. The Navy wouldn't
buy the idea of sending someone his age to medical
school at government expense. So he resigned his
commission as a Nuclear Engineer, left the Navy, put
himself through medical school at his own expense,
and _rejoined_ the Navy as an Anesthesiologist,
because he wanted not just to be a doctor, but a
_military_ doctor. His wife, draft dodging for sure
in 1981, was _also_ a Navy doctor, an opthomological
surgeon. By sheerest coincidence, it was she and he
in their respective capacities who sewed up my
oldest son's eyelid after a Ninja throwing star
incident.
The sad-funny part, of course, was that a Navy
officer who resigns his commission cannot come back
at his previous rank. He'd rejoined the Navy as a LT
instead, the usual rank at entry of a military MD.
Only, with promotions among the military medical
branches always extremely tight, he had just managed
to get back to LCDR by the time I met him, eight
years since we'd parted company. My life had gone
somewhat differently; while he had stayed even, I
had been promoted across the 11 intervening ranks
from E-6 to O-4, and was _also_ a LCDR, but a
retired one. So he'd given up the wealth of private
practice, many years of his life, a chance to retire
years sooner, and a chance to be an Admiral, surely
possible for a sailor with that much drive, for love
of the idea of being a doctor in the military.
On the other hand, his wife was probably the seventh
most beautiful female human being I've ever met in
person in my entire life, it wasn't all lossage for
him.
Not a single one of the doctors in my early military
career joined the service "to avoid the draft",
there _was_ no draft when I enlisted. Nor did
doctors stay on to be promoted to Admiral, like the
one in charge of the facility there to whom I read
the riot act at Oakland Naval Hospital, "to avoid
the draft". Any service obligation was long gone
before promotion to CDR. Nor did any of the three
doctors who replaced my broken arm bone with a
prosthesis choose the military for their medical
career "to avoid the draft"; the draft was long gone
in 1990.
It is just awesome how consistently the right
wingers posting to talk.bizarre feel compelled to
invent information about the real world that has no
relation to fact, to support opinions that have no
relation to sane ones. But then, you're the crowd
whose efforts have returned President WMD to a
second term of office, so at least we know who you
are imitating with such sincere "invented reality
to support your cause" flattering sociopathy.
xanthian.
ObBizarre: It is now as I continue to type this
01:21; I arrived home closer to midnight, at 01:09,
having left around 22:30. I walked 3.57 miles to the
grocery store, pushing a collection of their
shopping carts I found along the way, totaling four
"supersized" carts by the time I arrived. I left
carrying 70 pounds of groceries (weighed when I got
home), because I am an idiot who trys to ignore the
results on the container of living in a flesh
container for 60 years.
Within two blocks, despite that the temperature slid
from 47F to 43F during my amble, I was so overheated
I was stopping every 100 feet. Luckily, there on the
corner was the fifth stolen Food Max shopping cart
of the evening.
[I was to see yet another one, a mile or so further
along the way.]
Taking my conscience a quick two falls out of three,
I am now a California shopping cart thief, having
pushed that cart the remainder of the 3.57 miles
back to my palatial country estate. What are the
odds I'd find one on a vacant lot, with four wheels
that all tracked in the same direction?
Orion must have been looking out for me, he was
surely looking down on me, the only winter
constellation besides the Great Bear I can recognize
immediately.
The bizarre part is that I'd have been four times
the thief if picked up by the police while pushing
the first four carts to the store, since in
California it doesn't matter where you got the cart
or where you're taking it, possessing it without
written permission is the crime.
[People from metric countries, those numbers
translate freely to: "uphill, all the way, both
ways, through waist deep snow in a howling
blizzard". You have to trust me that this blends
well with the claims of heat prostration.]
Right now, sitting still in my unheated dwelling,
which has retained enough heat of the day to be 58F,
I am shivering nearly uncontrollably as the drying
sweat cools me through all the layers of clothing I
am wearing.
- Next message: Len Budney: "Re: [US Election last minute troll] Things you have to believe to be a Republican"
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