An Ethics Nightmare - Health Care Law

Well, the health care community is now bringing up that topic that makes us all cringe...the "I-hate-when-my-patient-comes-into-the-office-and-demands-a-certain-test-or-a-certain-medication." It's true. My Mom does that. She googles all her symptoms and tells her clinician what she needs. Funny thing is...sometimes she is right! But Doctors would never admit that! The point is, some medical tests are not necessary for some symptom presentations, even if a patient demands a certain test. And if the doctor orders the "unnecessary test," then we waste money. All the news outlets are writing about how this new health care law will need an infinite budget, because if you make a budget, it means someone somewhere will be denied something. So there's talk of making health care guidelines, and CNN has an article today where some doctor said there should be a payment system that denies reimbursement for unnecessary medicine and protect doctors from malpractice. What? So let me get this straight...in other words...some doctor can decide I don't need an MRI for my headache, and because that doctor says it's "unnecessary," then if I end up with an undetected brain tumor, I can't sue him???? Ridiculous! Bottom line...this new health care bill has opened a huge can of wiggling ethical worms. How are we going to pay this infinite budget? And if we need to make a budget...who is going to decide what is paid for and what isn't? Obama was negligent to sign this into law before examining the ethics piece. Look how long we have been debating stem cell research. This is no different. It needed to be examined by a medical ethics board and debated by professionals. We should sue Obama for malpractice and negligence for signing the bill.