Ask almost any doctor in a candid moment and he/she will tell you that they are slaves to requirements to prevent malpractice suits. Patients complain that medical personnel are impersonal and treat the patients as little better than a file folder. All this is indicative of the qualitative change that has occurred in the last couple of decades in the medical world.
The new medical practice is now dictated by a series of protocals, quality metrics, and blueprints issued by the government, insurance carriers, and professional associations. These glorified checklists now predominate in all phases of the treatment of illness. As a consequence doctors and other medical staff are trained to think formalistically and less analytically. The art of diagnoses is now more and more subordinated to simply watching for a certain series of symptoms which then triggers a predetermined response plan.
Doctors no longer treat patients. Instead they are treating symptoms under a program that has been dictated to them by Medicare, the government, or the insurance industry. Thus doctors are being gradually transformed into pavlovian response mechanisms -- if a certain symptomatic stimulus is given, they respond in the programmed manner.
Patients in this arrangement become little more than pieces of meat. Their individuality and history have minimal importance. What matters is whether they fit the profile for whatever ails them. In many cases the recovery program is simply dictated.
The robot-ization of medicine is proceeding apace. The next stage, however, is already clear. Very soon doctors will be punished if they do not follow the prescribed action plans. Already in some states (Massachusetts for example) doctors are evaluated and ranked according to a statistical survey of their patients' "progress" as envisaged by the plans for the illnesses. Doctors who have a 'bad' record can be downgraded in their ranking and have their reputation smeared.
The patient will fare no better. Soon, patients who don't toe the line will face greately increased treatment costs. For example, if a patient is unable to follow the dictated recovery plan, say because of family problems, when he lands in the hospital again, the treatment costs will escalate. Similarly, someone who is obese may have to pay more to treat diabetes. Etc, etc.
The overall new idea is instituting accountability in patient care. Doctors will be held to specific formal standards. Patients will be expected to be responsible for their health. Treatment costs will depend on the patient's life style. And who will determine if the life style is 'health affirmative'? Why the government of course through profiles relating to prevention of certain diseases, ailments, etc.
This centralization and robotization of medicine is not just another stage of the evolution of the practice of medicine. Instead, we are witnessing the deliberate and planned transformation of medicine to a cost-efficient, no-guesswork, no thinking industry. We will soon see an industry completely dominated and directed by the insurance giants and by government commissions, who in turn are directed by "experts" who just so happen to have the same long-term financial goals as the rich elite.
One might ask where is the charity in this system? The answer is that it will not exist. All the human-ness and basic human solidarity is being boiled out of the system and replaced with the dictatorship of cold cash and cost efficiency. At best one can expect a depersonalized charity where patients are bureaucratically referred to a bureaucratized agency that deals with a particular need.
What is described here is beginning. Certainly it does not exist full-blown yet. One can now still find charity-a-plenty in most medical establishments. And the dedication and conscientiousness of medical personnel is palpable. But beware!!!! Change is occurring, and the new world is coming faster than may be thought. It is being implemented step by step.
What does all this have to do with the Church? As usual the Church has nothing to say about these developments, even though the changes most directly effect the Church faithful.
Perhaps the Church should not be saying anything. From a certain point of view, that case can be made. But, if so, why is the voice of the Catholic doctors and nurses, the medical associations, the administrators, the Priests and Nuns who devote their lives to the ill not encouraged to speak out? Is the whole Catholic world going to sit by while one of the most charitable of human activities is transformed, in effect destroyed?
Where is the Catholic leader who will stand up and tell what is occurring, why it is occurring, who is responsible, and what can be done about it? Where is the weight of billions of Catholics being felt? Where are the appeals for world-wide prayer campaigns to stay the hand of these crazed, money-hungry dictators to be.
To say and do nothing means a historic defeat for the faithful in one of their basic human needs. Surely that has to mean something to even the self-satisfied and complacent bureaucracy that dominates the Church.
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