I submit that the relationships between the doctor and the patient needs to be a cooperative one and the patient needs to take responsibility for being informed, asking the right questions, and working together with the doctor.

My objection about military medicine is that it is NOT ABOUT DOING WHAT IS RIGHT FOR THE PATIENT. It is about doing what is right for the military. Those are two entirely different propositions-and particularly for conditions diagnosed under the DSM-IV, they run afoul of the law and the patient’s rights under the constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The doctors responsibility should be to the patient always. The CO is the one who has to look out for the military. And like a lawyer he has an overriding obligation to protect the privacy of the patient. At all costs.

All the CO needs to know is if the guy is fit for duty or not. Too many military doctors take it way beyond that-into the realm of making value judgments on the patients lives. Been there done that, got the T-shirt.

People seem to think that being a doctor is like being a mechanic. It kinda is… only a car with a certain problem, as it is a machine, acts the same way EVERY time. 10 people with the same disease can present 10 different ways. The same drug given to 10 people can have 20 different side effects. Add to all those variables the fact that people, even doctors, make mistakes. I’m sorry, but military providers are placed in impossible situations where they sometimes must make choices most (especially a jury of civilians who’s only view of the military is what they see on CNN) would never understand. That includes cutting corners at best (as many “standard of care” diagnostic equipment is not available on a deployment) or at worst letting people die to save others. Do you really want to add the burden of worrying that someone will sue them later?

I do not know any of the cases you talk about… but those aside, your problem seem to be more that you don’t like the attitude of the doctors more than anything else. Your answer: SUE THEM!!! which jives with the fact that statistically people who like their doctors are less likely to sue them… even if they make a mistake. On the flip side, people who dislike the provider, will sue them for anything… including common complications that are no fault of the doctor. People seem to have unreasonable expectations, then want to get paid when they are not met.

Last point: Lawsuits and overregulation are the major reason why healthcare is so expensive in this country. People will sue over anything… and many times it costs less to settle even if the doctor didn’t do anything wrong. That cost is passed on to the hospitals and doctors in the form of increased insurance premiums. It is then passed on to the individual consumer directly … or to their health insurance… which then charges everyone more. Who wins when noone wants to be an OB/GYN or the cost of care quadruples because in FL it costs six figures for malpractice insurance? Not the avg joe on the street. With suing the US Gov’t directly… Guess who’ll pay that cost? You, me, and the rest of the taxpayers. Great plan.

Testicular cancer, easily curable, in it’s early stages, even then.

They clipped his nuts, gutted him like a fish and sent him home to die, with a medical discharge. He was a great guy.

I think the biggest problem with military health care at least from my Army experience are the number of malingerers who clog up the system to get out of PT or work. I have always felt that if the Army charged a soldier $20 to go on sick call the Army’s productivity would greatly increase and people with real health problems would be able to get an appointment more quickly.

I got to admit I caught a couple of seconds of the story last night on CBS and then moved on/fell asleep. The agenda at that network has been pretty clear for decades. I join Bill and Karl, Army brat for 17 years of Army health care then joined the navy for its version for the last 24 years. Talked to our Group Doc today, an excellent and very honest man who also caught the CBS show. He told me that the good SGT had been fingered with a melanoma at MEPS and that there were no circumstances he could imagine where the military would accept a recruit with a melanoma.

It looks like there was some kind of breakdown in the system and aren’t we all familiar enough with the system to realize that they happen? CBS is 99% full of shit when it comes to the military so I’m not willing to extend any cred to them on this story.

The troubling fact to me is the way military health care works-where the screeners e.g. the GP’s are the new folks so that they can then move on to their residency.

Also are you saying that patients don’t have a right to complain?