Today, in the presence of family, friends, teachers, and colleagues, I dedicate myself to the profession of Medicine.
I pledge myself to the service of humanity. I will use my skills to care for all in need, without bias and with openness of spirit. The health of my patients will be my first concern. I vow to hold sacred the bond between doctor and patient. I will hold in confidence all that my patients entrust to me. I will strive to alleviate suffering. I will respect the dignity and autonomy of my patients in living and dying.
As a Physician, I recognize my duty to society. I will work to promote health and prevent disease. I will advocate for the welfare of my community. Even under duress, I will not use my knowledge or my skills against humanity. I will acknowledge my limitations and my mistakes so that I may learn from them. To uphold these responsibilities, I will maintain my own well-being and the well-being of those close to me.
I will promote the integrity of the practice of Medicine. In the tradition of my profession, I honor all who teach me this Art. Through honest and respectful collaboration with my colleagues, I will seek new knowledge, reexamine ideas and practices of the past, and teach what I have learned.
Above all, the health of my patients will be my first concern.
So what would happen if all employer’s stopped contracting with health insurance carriers?
Would the system fall apart?
What moron decided it would be a good idea to tie health insurance to employment?* Why should those two go together? My car insurance doesn’t come with my job.
Yeah, yeah, I get the “but healthy employees are good for the company bottom line”…but are you sure about that? Does providing health insurance to your employees even help the bottom line?
The point of insurance is to pool risk. I suppose that a business is just as good as any other place to cultivate that risk pool. But why can’t the insurance business operate like the car insurance business? Pool risk from the public at large.
If you unraveled the health care industry from employers, wouldn’t they be able to spend more on employee wages and salaries thus putting cash back into the working man’s pocket allowing the working man to purchase his own insurance plan? That would give the working man…Gasp…choice! Such a dirty word.
Could I ask a few more rhetorical questions?
*Those Blue Cross folks at Baylor in the 1920’s probably get the nod for the prepaid business of health care–but the “HMO” existed for a decade or two prior to that.
The definition of eternity is the time between midnight and five AM. If you look hard enough you can almost see the clock hands moving backwards and no matter what you do, it’s always just a little after one. In fact, it will be one AM for hours. Your brain will cry for sleep and you will be totally uninterested in the mundane crap that fills a lot of your night. At the same time your most ferverent wish will be that it’s all mundane crap. No two ways around it, call, like most of intern year blows with the power of a thousand hurricanes.
