Comments on: Entitlement Addiction Hard for Doctors to Let Go Of

By: Matthew Pilling

Matthew Pilling — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:33:09 +0000

Jason–you’ve pointed out a pattern here that doesn’t just affect doctors, it affects all of us. And, the pattern I see isn’t the one of government dependence–it’s that pattern of dependence in general (the opposite of self-reliance), regardless of the party being depended upon. Surely, dependence on government brings all sorts of additional problems and violations of principle with it. But, how many professionals in markets that don’t receive major government benefit/interference allow themselves to grow comfortable in their marketplace and sluff off the need to continuously innovate and improve? They grow dependent on the current market conditions and subsequently struggle when market conditions change (which they always do)?

No one can know in advance exactly where the markets will go, and we have to work with the conditions we have today. I always find it interesting, however, to watch the shake-out that happens in a market when major changes occur. Look at today’s mortgage market, for example. How many of us know someone who is a good, hard worker that used to be employed in the mortgage industry that is now struggling to make ends meet? Ironically, some of the “producers” that I know in the mortgage field are making more money now than they’ve ever made. And that is because their businesses weren’t founded on a single tactic or strategy. They were founded upon principles. Principles are unchanging, but their application changes as situations change. That is where real innovation comes from. But, if one is unfamiliar with principle, they are left to try new strategies and hope that they will work.

Profit truly is the tool of validation. But, as shown by these doctors, simply making a profit isn’t enough.

By: Onika Nugent

Onika Nugent — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:48:11 +0000

A doctor who has a sense of entitlement and refuses to treat the poor is not a doctor I want to visit. There are doctors out there who charge little to nothing for treating the poor. I think to be a good doctor, one has to care about people and not just profits.

By: Ammon

Ammon — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:20:18 +0000

No doubt. This concept is analogous to the issue of human slavery, because in reality, that is what it is. The doctors are the slaves, and the recipient of Health Care are the masters.

The slave owners in the South of the US before the Civil War, thought that the economies of the South would be essential to the prosperity of the US. They believed that they were actually prosperous because their use of slavery allowed them to obtain an abundance of material goods. But once slavery was denied them, many slave owners starved to death or became extremely ill because they didn’t have any idea of how to do even the most menial tasks themselves.

This also demonstrates that freedom is not the only ingredient necessary for prosperity. The slaves were just as dependent on their masters as their masters were dependent on them. Many slaves went back to be employed by their previous masters, because they had not learned how to direct their own labor. It had been stolen from them, so many lacked initiative.

Another action step would be to read, “Up From Slavery” an Autobiography of Booker T. Washington, a slave that helped other slaves overcome the dependency on others to direct their labor.

I see many parallels between my own life as a slave working on becoming free and the stories of freed slaves that Mr. Washington helped.