A Physician’s Disillusionment

bridged

Thomas P Stossel, Practice Makes Imperfect; He encounters physicians who insist on expensive, useless remedies and terminally ill patients who ask in vain to forgo treatment. Wall Street Journal, Aug 26, 2014
online.wsj.com/articles/book-review-doctored-by-sandeep-jauhar-1409008461
(book review on Sandeep Jauhar, Doctored; The disillusionment of an American physician. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014)

two consecutive paragraphs:

"Having been there [in the 1950s and 1960s], I can attest that no such nobility existed. Doctoring, mostly done by white males, involved grueling work schedules, especially during training, and arrogant paternalism toward patients with little attention to their convenience or comfort. Complainers, jerks and opportunists may abound in medicine today, but they were around back then as well. Most importantly, medical care is far better now. Death due to cardiovascular disease, Dr. Jauhar's specialty, is 60% lower today compared to that era, predominantly thanks to the ability of physicians to apply clinically effective technologies—overuse of them notwithstanding—that save, prolong and improve lives. Doctors may indeed on average have been happier in those days, but their contributions to longevity and well-being were much smaller.

"Dr Jauhar also invokes what I term "the great American medical guilt trip": the fact that we spend far more on health care for allegedly worse health outcomes, including higher mortality, compared to other countries. This self-flagellation is an apples-to-oranges comparison of vastly different geographies, social structures and cultures. After subtracting homicides and automobile fatalities, the mortality discrepancies largely disappear.

Note:
(a)
(i) About The Author. sandeepjauhar.com, undated
www.sandeepjauhar.com/author.html
(is “the director of the Heart Failure Program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center”)
(ii) Peter McDermott, A Grueling Test. America (magazine); The National Catholic Review, May 5, 2008
americamagazine.org/issue/culture/grueling-test
(nook review on Intern; A doctor's initiation. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008)

Quote: “Born in India in 1968, he came to the United States nine years later with his parents and siblings. His father was a plant geneticist who did not get many breaks in American academia and blamed that on racism. His mother was a lab technician; and her family, which settled in southern California after two years in Kentucky, often had to rely on her salary to stay afloat. Given that their background was solidly middle class in its values and expectations—her father was an army doctor before going into private practice in New Delhi—Jauhar’s parents were far from living out their American dream. Yet they never seemed to doubt for a second that their children, their sons in particular, were destined for great things”)

(b) Please read credentials of the reviewer first.