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>Alternatively, perhaps MDs are like the mainstream media in that they pitch services to the expectation of the consumers- how could they do otherwise and stay in business?

Who says they have to stay in the voodoo business? They can go out and get real jobs and let the minimum wage immigrants have a larger share of the toenail-clipping business.

>>IME a lot of your countryfolk equate pin-cushion tests and probing in every imaginable respect as a proxy for quality.
>
Agreed. But where did that notion come from? Have you watched the big Pharma ads on TV lately?
Guess who prescribes that stuff?


>> have you ever faced a fierce family demanding every imaginable test and therapy for grandma who has had a catastrophic stroke and is unlikely ever to regain consciousness?

No, but I saw my mother and my late wife through the last years of their lives.
I spent much of my time refusing tests and "therapies" that were recommended by MD's who, when I pressed them, could only justify the procedures by saying "Well, Medicare will pay for it."

>>Perhaps you've not yet seen what happens when the bureaucrats and politicians are left in charge of the asylum- but that's what you are wishing for.

What do we have now?

"Michelle Obama had been promoted in 2005 to vice president for community and external affairs after three years as the executive director for community affairs. It’s true, as the e-mail (and National Review column) says, that she received a sizable pay raise that year. She went from earning $121,910 in 2004 as an executive director at the hospital to making $316,962 in 2005 as a vice president, according to tax returns filed by the Obamas for those years."

That's Medicare and Medicaid money that she was being paid.
Maybe you can explain how she helped save the lives of those people you mentioned who are not sacks of wheat?