A Glimpse of Our Future

In Sunday's USA Today:

"A 3-year-old girl who suffered massive brain damage after undergoing dental procedures on multiple teeth last month has died, an attorney for her family said Saturday.

The child's family has filed a malpractice suit against the Kailua, Hawaii, dentist who performed the procedures, and that suit will be amended to include wrongful death, Rick Fried, attorney for the family of Finley Boyle, said in confirming her death.

Finley died at Hospice Hawaii at 8:47 p.m. Friday with her family at her side, hospice President Kenneth Zeri said.

The parents, Ashley and Evan Boyle, filed the lawsuit last week against dentist Lilly Geyer, 36, and unidentified staff members at Island Dentistry for Children. The suit seeks unspecified damages.

The case follows that of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, who was declared brain dead by physicians at Children's Hospital Oakland after surgery to remove her tonsils and treat other tissue to improve her breathing. While in the recovery room she began hemorrhaging, suffered cardiac arrest and lapsed into a coma. She remains on life support.

Fried said that the child was diagnosed by the dentist and scheduled for procedures on 10 teeth, including root canals on four teeth and fillings in the others."

Uh, what's going on with some of our doctors and dentists? Are they really unqualified to practice? Are these men and women the ones who were near the bottom of their classes?

Is there a real process to renew their licenses? Or, are the renewals rubber-stamped by equally unqualified, disinterested public employees.

In order to renew a mortgage or real estate license, at least in New York or Florida, you must take a 45 hour continuing education class AND get at least an 85 on the final exam. I know about the Florida and New York real property laws because I was licensed in both those states for both. But what are the requirements to renew these physical health licenses? 

I am certainly not condemning doctors, dentists and others in the health fields. After all, I am alive because a great Nurse Practitioner realized I might have cancer, was right, and got me to the best doctors, who then referred me to other great doctors. But, why shouldn't other patients have great nurses, doctors and dentists?

Looking soberly at the disaster which is Obamacare, I think this nightmare that these families have incurred and are living through now will become the norm and not the exception. Doctors will be forced to breeze through exams of patients, rather than spend the quality time necessary to properly diagnose a patient, in order to keep the government's costs to a minimum. 

Is that what we really want? A bureaucrat determining health care? What happened to "First, do no harm"?

The doctor and dentist who were responsible for the death of these children  must be stripped of their licenses, no matter what happens in a court of law. They certainly did not live up to that promise, to not do harm. The ethics and morality of their actions outweighs any legal issue they may otherwise successfully win. 

It is time to really protect the patient with real reform, not this bureaucratic hobgoblin called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It is neither.