Bang on. Excellent summation of the current sad state of affairs. I wish the public's "awakening" to the deterioration in medical standards also heralded a solution to this mess... but I won't hold my breath.
I may have related this tale some time ago in this space, but some time ago I had a flagrantly AWFUL med student with me on two successive ED shifts - so awful he'd have made your math-challenged student doctor look like Einstein.
I tried my best to offer pointers for "remediation" during my time with him, but he was also cursed with the inability to accept constructive feedback. All of this I laid out in my subsequent formal evaluation of his performance — and for my efforts I was the one hauled in front of various committees and made to feel as if I was the one who was deficient, as an educator.
Leave aside that while I may not be the greatest teacher in the world, I've garnered a few clinical teaching awards over the years.... I was the problem, see, NOT the student... who got his MD degree despite his glaring inadequaces (it's almost impossible to turf someone from med school these days once they're in), and is now on on his way to becoming an orthopedic surgeon.
God forbid he every lays hands on any of my family members.
It's interesting - on a couple of the groups I am on docs said the same thing. That when a doc fails a med student it is the doctor - not the student - who comes under scrutiny and suspicion. I had similar experiences myself.
The fact that it is so difficult to fail med students now makes it ever more critical to have a very strict selection process.
The same is true with other areas of the medical field. Feelings are being prioritized over knowledge and abilities. Nowadays I try not to use the medical system at all.
I’m a pain patient , partly because of how slow it is to get an appointment with a surgeon, interview them, find out they don’t know anything except the basic simple example from the front of the textbook section, then try another one. I just need two surgeries and some injections. But the diagnosis isn’t handed to them by a radiologist.
I have a couple questions: what can patients do to oust these pretenders? Does reporting to state licensing boards help? I heard that reporting bad practitioners to Medicare can have some effect, because institutions don’t want Medicare upset with them or something along those lines.
I’m not expecting a one report and done answer. I think I have seen some lower level clinicians ousted after complaints about their competence. But firing is a doctor’s prerogative. My reason is: it’s hard to motivate people to show up. They’ll complain a lot, but shaking the tree is effort. They’d be more likely to engage oversight if they believed it would help. I’m talking about patients, who know very well when they’ve met a scary bad one. If they’re paying attention, anyway.
There’s a couple of generations that grew up expecting rewards for participation. Now they expect to be admitted just because they applied, a degree just because they were admitted, a job just because they got a degree, high pay because they have a job, and a roof over their head just because.
Having read this and Rick Gibson's latest, I conclude that we have in fact reached the point where medicine is no longer a profession. It retains some of the trappings, as does democracy in nations increasingly controlled by global elites, managerialists and lawyers, but it is now regulated and controlled, not self regulated, with no tolerance for dissent. Major changes such as MAiD are imposed with no proper consideration, debate or discussion within the profession. Calls for caution are regarded as obstruction of progress. Even if physicians wanted to stop this, and I fear most do not, it is too late
Sadly I think you are (mostly) right. Evil people have a stranglehold on medical training and medical practice. But in every time in history this has resulted in dissidents innovating and working around the tyranny. Dark times for sure, but something good will happen.
Well that would be an amazing honour if it ever happened. I have actually toyed with the idea of doing a "Med School for non-physicians" course. Of course no real (woke) university would allow it, but maybe we could do it online through FreeSpeechInMedicine.com
PS: Julie and I are signed up for Peterson Academy. An amazing initiative!!!
A few decades ago, I was a department head and then an assistant dean; even then I was worried about the downgrading of excellence/hard work/intelligence/critical thinking in favour of equality. Even then, my immediate boss complained about pampered med students who were raised by helicopter parents and were unable to deal with even minor clinical challenges. Now it's much more serious but no one seems to question the rise of D, I, E.
Thank you for articulating what so many of us haven't been able to express adequately.
Approximately 2007 I was working in ER when the main phone rang. The ward clerk cupped the receiver, pulled a face, and said "it's the mom of the med student who just finished the rotation". I had given a marginal evaluation (not a fail, but some comments about improvements that needed to be made) and it turned out mom was calling to tell me that I had upset her precious. God help us.
It seems very deliberate, kill us early wit bad food, cigarettes, marijuana and booze, then overmedicate with stimulants, SSRI’s, ozempic and statins. No wonder life expectancy is dropping.
If any of the ruling elite have a major health problem, they would not be seeking care from a TMU grad nor would any of their family wait for 12 hours in our overcrowded emergency departments.
It is obvious we need to eradicate all the DEI influences in our institutions, which starts with defunding them at each of the federal, provincial, and municipal levels.
Every province and city should be required to undertake an audit to expose the nannification of our decision making. “Being kind” is a deceptive term for concealing incompetence and lying to people as to whether they are fit for a particular purpose. It benefits no one in the long run.
My mom and dad were both teachers and very left wing in their younger years. They believed that every kid, regardless of his level of ability, should be nurtured and helped to reach the maximum potential that God gave him.
But they were also not Rousseau-ian blank slatists who thought that any kid could do anything. My dad always compared it to hockey. He was very involved with teaching Squirt hockey for many years. He said that within the first few weeks of kids being on the ice you can tell that some are going to be very good and others are never going to be a Gretzky due to innate ability. And he felt academic potential was the same. You never give up on anyone, but we are all born with different gifts.
IQ is a very inconvenient truth for the left wing, since - especially in a highly technical society - the fact that IQ is a wide spectrum goes against the idea of creating a society where everyone is equal.
If you are into a REALLY technical read, Charles Murray's "Human Diversity" goes into great detail about the genetics, nature, and nurture that determines our final IQ.
I entirely agree with you, though I don't if anything can be done about it. I did my engineering degree in the mid 1980s at McGill I am pretty sure the standards then were up to snuff, given the difficulty of it. It was extremely demanding. In terms of places like TMU today, I don't know how you fix stupid. Seems to me that the only solution is to work on a society wide cultural change that might eventually appear back in institutions, but that is a long road. I am considering developing and giving a public lecture (not yet written but more or less titled something like 'How to succeed in a grievance culture') teaching self-reliance (and confidence) via trainings in stoicism and other classical self improvement techniques, the target audience would ideally be disaffected former arts and humanities students in their 30s who are failing at life due to bad indoctrination at college and who want to turn their lives around. Any thoughts?
I think that the loss of meaning of a university degree will break credentialism. It will take a while but it's already happening. More and more employers are willing to take a chance on people without formal credentials. The internet - places like GitHub and other sites - allow people to informally but publicly display their knowledge.
I know a few employers who are now saying that they look at a degree in - for instance - women's studies as a black mark not a selling feature. I think as more and more people catch on to the fact that university has become a joke, this trend will accelerate. In the meantime, green shoots like Peterson Academy, Ralston College, the University of Austin, and a revitalized Hillsdale College are springing up through the dead lawns of the quads.
Yes. That makes sense. I also like, "How to Manage the Corrupt Management, A Navigation of the Pervasive Corruption in American Culture", bit yours is more concise. I only recommend a longer title because we have been trained to judge whether ot not we will engage further by reading titles, and your title may not be specific enough to draw attention. The idea should be taught at every post secondary institution, unfortunately, the opposite philosophy is commonplace. How to LIE and Fuck Prople Over While filling Your Heart With Hate and Eroding From the Inside Out should be the name of Business Ethics. Sorry, but I have anger issues. But I love your idea.
Thanks! The point would be to allow people who have been programmed with grievance and resentment in college to embrace gratitude and self-reliance to make their lives better. Similar ideas to Jordan Peterson, for a general audience, but specifically designed to counteract Critical Theory, Critical Pedagogy and other socially poisonous DIE culture.
I've been saying to people for a while that if docs are going to follow guidelines like robots, act like cogs in a government-run medical machine, and stop thinking for themselves, then we can and will be replaced by AI. An old-fashioned doc who got to know his patient and respect that patient's wishes can't be replaced by a robot.
Would it surprise anyone if right under the quota banner proudly displayed at TMU prominent space is give to MLK Jr.'s quote?
A possible perverse untended consequences of identity politics policies is when it spills over into common knowledge that the system is pumping out mediocre quota doctors a rational person will avoid any doctor with a name whose ethnicity is common to quotas. People will always wonder if theirs is a token doctor.
Folks, embrace the decline. It has to get worse before it gets better. But this will take a long time.
And although I didn't know they had used the MLK quote, it's not surprising that they would, while behaving in a way that is 180 degrees from what he preached for.
Just so I'm clear, I don't know if they did (probably not). I'm just saying it wouldn't surprise me if they did. Cognitive dissonance can strike at any given time.
This is why I was glad to see that my surgeon for a recent major procedure went to med school in Israel. Pretty sure they're not lowering their standards there like we are in North America.
AFAIK although Israel has gone woke in some ways they still have a more functional education (including medical education) system. Perhaps there is a reader who knows the answer to this?
I did try to research this before I posted. One interesting article I found was from the NYT about Israeli schools trying affirmative action based on socioeconomic class rather than race or other such characteristic.
I would also be curious to hear from readers who have more direct knowledge about this.
Pierre Kory's Medical Musings on substack has recently written an article about whether (or not) recent medical interventions could be causing physicians to be making medical mistakes.
My son has noticed certain classmates are expecting to get into medical school while barely passing human physiology class, likely a symptom of " overt racial quotas for medical school admissions".
And the bar has been lowered with respect to the quality of medical school educarion?
It is likely that all of these factors, in one way or another, result in a decline in the quality of public healthcare.
So basically, to ensure we have competent doctors we patients now need to look for doctors who are white or of Chinese ethnicity and at least 40 years old to know they had to achieve the higher scores.
Where we need equity for doctors is in paying for the escalating university costs because only kids from wealthier parents can study or they have to take on huge debts. I think provinces should have a deal where they pay 75% of the tuition fees in exchange for the student signing a contract to work for X years within the province. But keep the admission standards high and the performance standards high through the studies and training. Or something to that effect - I’m not a doctor so I don’t know the best criteria. I just know some kids from low incomes who would have made great doctors - very smart and hardworking - but couldn’t take on the debt.
PS: banks will give you enough money to get through med school (and more!) once you present them with your letter of acceptance. And we docs make a gazillion dollars so can easily pay the debt back once we finish. The only people I knew who got behind the financial eightball were the type who took out massive loans during med school to buy high-end cars and houses, go on nice vacations, etc. Julie and I lived a very basic life, rented modest apartments, didn't own a car (walked/biked/bus), didn't eat out, etc. I was able to pay off our large loans within a year and a half of starting work, even though she was still finishing school (specialist training is longer)
Absolutely people can survive the debt. Neither of The Pairodocs came from wealth. Julie's dad was a sheet metal worker and her mom a hairdresser. My dad was a teacher. The one part of my university my parents paid for was a 50$ one-way train ticket to go there after high school. After that I was on my own.
There are 2 issues that get conflated here. The majority of med students come from upper income families. This makes it appear that poorer kids don't go to med school because they can't afford it. But if that's an issue at all, it's tiny. The reason that most med students come from upper-SES families is well outlined in Charles Murray's "Coming Apart". Society is much more technical and thus IQ and income are more closely correlated over the last few generations. Add to that the fact that marriages are much more selected now to mate high IQ men with high IQ women. And IQ is very genetic. Put that all together and what happens is that smart, rich people beget smart kids. The kind of kids who absorb their work ethic, do well in school, and are far more likely to get into med school. The idea of an "adversity score" is to mitigate against this, but what it does instead is to let in people with (on average) lower IQ's.
I highly recommend "Coming Apart", even though the conclusion (that I reached, at least) is that this societal stratification is inevitable. Maybe not though - you may feel differently after reading it.
What a disastrous situation we as consumers (patients) are in. It feels like Russian Roulette to me. Thank you for this post PairODocs. You are absolutely correct on this entire article and I hadn't known about all the stats that you provided here. The section under "This should shake your faith in the medical profession" is how I have been feeling for a longggg time. On a scale of 1-10 my faith used to be about 4-5 and since the covid debacle it is 1 and 1 it will remain by the info you have shared here.
I agree that there are some good ones (there are several who have spoken out in these last 4 years) that I wish were able to take patients. If not for them, it can be a hit or miss unless you get a referral name from someone you trust and then since there is a waiting list, you may never get to have that doctor.
Bang on. Excellent summation of the current sad state of affairs. I wish the public's "awakening" to the deterioration in medical standards also heralded a solution to this mess... but I won't hold my breath.
I may have related this tale some time ago in this space, but some time ago I had a flagrantly AWFUL med student with me on two successive ED shifts - so awful he'd have made your math-challenged student doctor look like Einstein.
I tried my best to offer pointers for "remediation" during my time with him, but he was also cursed with the inability to accept constructive feedback. All of this I laid out in my subsequent formal evaluation of his performance — and for my efforts I was the one hauled in front of various committees and made to feel as if I was the one who was deficient, as an educator.
Leave aside that while I may not be the greatest teacher in the world, I've garnered a few clinical teaching awards over the years.... I was the problem, see, NOT the student... who got his MD degree despite his glaring inadequaces (it's almost impossible to turf someone from med school these days once they're in), and is now on on his way to becoming an orthopedic surgeon.
God forbid he every lays hands on any of my family members.
It's interesting - on a couple of the groups I am on docs said the same thing. That when a doc fails a med student it is the doctor - not the student - who comes under scrutiny and suspicion. I had similar experiences myself.
The fact that it is so difficult to fail med students now makes it ever more critical to have a very strict selection process.
PS: if people didn't read your Substack on this issue (which was fantastic) they should do so. https://dredles.substack.com/p/dont-trust-me-im-a-doctor
The same is true with other areas of the medical field. Feelings are being prioritized over knowledge and abilities. Nowadays I try not to use the medical system at all.
I'm in the same boat. I have quit using the medical system.
I’m a pain patient , partly because of how slow it is to get an appointment with a surgeon, interview them, find out they don’t know anything except the basic simple example from the front of the textbook section, then try another one. I just need two surgeries and some injections. But the diagnosis isn’t handed to them by a radiologist.
I have a couple questions: what can patients do to oust these pretenders? Does reporting to state licensing boards help? I heard that reporting bad practitioners to Medicare can have some effect, because institutions don’t want Medicare upset with them or something along those lines.
I’m not expecting a one report and done answer. I think I have seen some lower level clinicians ousted after complaints about their competence. But firing is a doctor’s prerogative. My reason is: it’s hard to motivate people to show up. They’ll complain a lot, but shaking the tree is effort. They’d be more likely to engage oversight if they believed it would help. I’m talking about patients, who know very well when they’ve met a scary bad one. If they’re paying attention, anyway.
This terrifies me. Wow
There’s a couple of generations that grew up expecting rewards for participation. Now they expect to be admitted just because they applied, a degree just because they were admitted, a job just because they got a degree, high pay because they have a job, and a roof over their head just because.
Well put Rick!
Having read this and Rick Gibson's latest, I conclude that we have in fact reached the point where medicine is no longer a profession. It retains some of the trappings, as does democracy in nations increasingly controlled by global elites, managerialists and lawyers, but it is now regulated and controlled, not self regulated, with no tolerance for dissent. Major changes such as MAiD are imposed with no proper consideration, debate or discussion within the profession. Calls for caution are regarded as obstruction of progress. Even if physicians wanted to stop this, and I fear most do not, it is too late
Sadly I think you are (mostly) right. Evil people have a stranglehold on medical training and medical practice. But in every time in history this has resulted in dissidents innovating and working around the tyranny. Dark times for sure, but something good will happen.
PS: for readers who don't follow Rick Gibson, here is his piece you referenced: https://rickgibson.substack.com/p/the-evolving-nature-of-medical-practice
Maybe Pairodocs should approach Peterson Academy about offering a medical education system based on merit. With Chris at the helm .
Well that would be an amazing honour if it ever happened. I have actually toyed with the idea of doing a "Med School for non-physicians" course. Of course no real (woke) university would allow it, but maybe we could do it online through FreeSpeechInMedicine.com
PS: Julie and I are signed up for Peterson Academy. An amazing initiative!!!
How about another conference in Cape Breton? Your site shows a ref to 2024 but nothing there.
No conference for 2024, but we are hoping to host one in 2025. Stay tuned!
A few decades ago, I was a department head and then an assistant dean; even then I was worried about the downgrading of excellence/hard work/intelligence/critical thinking in favour of equality. Even then, my immediate boss complained about pampered med students who were raised by helicopter parents and were unable to deal with even minor clinical challenges. Now it's much more serious but no one seems to question the rise of D, I, E.
Thank you for articulating what so many of us haven't been able to express adequately.
Approximately 2007 I was working in ER when the main phone rang. The ward clerk cupped the receiver, pulled a face, and said "it's the mom of the med student who just finished the rotation". I had given a marginal evaluation (not a fail, but some comments about improvements that needed to be made) and it turned out mom was calling to tell me that I had upset her precious. God help us.
This sounds like many hockey moms.
God help us, indeed and I wonder where she is practicing now. I shudder.
It seems very deliberate, kill us early wit bad food, cigarettes, marijuana and booze, then overmedicate with stimulants, SSRI’s, ozempic and statins. No wonder life expectancy is dropping.
If any of the ruling elite have a major health problem, they would not be seeking care from a TMU grad nor would any of their family wait for 12 hours in our overcrowded emergency departments.
It is obvious we need to eradicate all the DEI influences in our institutions, which starts with defunding them at each of the federal, provincial, and municipal levels.
Every province and city should be required to undertake an audit to expose the nannification of our decision making. “Being kind” is a deceptive term for concealing incompetence and lying to people as to whether they are fit for a particular purpose. It benefits no one in the long run.
"Weaponized empathy"
Wow, bold move to write about this, and especially to mention IQ, which seems to be a concept non grata these days. Kudos for continuing to speak out.
My mom and dad were both teachers and very left wing in their younger years. They believed that every kid, regardless of his level of ability, should be nurtured and helped to reach the maximum potential that God gave him.
But they were also not Rousseau-ian blank slatists who thought that any kid could do anything. My dad always compared it to hockey. He was very involved with teaching Squirt hockey for many years. He said that within the first few weeks of kids being on the ice you can tell that some are going to be very good and others are never going to be a Gretzky due to innate ability. And he felt academic potential was the same. You never give up on anyone, but we are all born with different gifts.
IQ is a very inconvenient truth for the left wing, since - especially in a highly technical society - the fact that IQ is a wide spectrum goes against the idea of creating a society where everyone is equal.
If you are into a REALLY technical read, Charles Murray's "Human Diversity" goes into great detail about the genetics, nature, and nurture that determines our final IQ.
I entirely agree with you, though I don't if anything can be done about it. I did my engineering degree in the mid 1980s at McGill I am pretty sure the standards then were up to snuff, given the difficulty of it. It was extremely demanding. In terms of places like TMU today, I don't know how you fix stupid. Seems to me that the only solution is to work on a society wide cultural change that might eventually appear back in institutions, but that is a long road. I am considering developing and giving a public lecture (not yet written but more or less titled something like 'How to succeed in a grievance culture') teaching self-reliance (and confidence) via trainings in stoicism and other classical self improvement techniques, the target audience would ideally be disaffected former arts and humanities students in their 30s who are failing at life due to bad indoctrination at college and who want to turn their lives around. Any thoughts?
Love the idea!
I think that the loss of meaning of a university degree will break credentialism. It will take a while but it's already happening. More and more employers are willing to take a chance on people without formal credentials. The internet - places like GitHub and other sites - allow people to informally but publicly display their knowledge.
I know a few employers who are now saying that they look at a degree in - for instance - women's studies as a black mark not a selling feature. I think as more and more people catch on to the fact that university has become a joke, this trend will accelerate. In the meantime, green shoots like Peterson Academy, Ralston College, the University of Austin, and a revitalized Hillsdale College are springing up through the dead lawns of the quads.
Sign me up!
What are your thoughts on the potential title? (How to succeed in a grievance culture).
Yes. That makes sense. I also like, "How to Manage the Corrupt Management, A Navigation of the Pervasive Corruption in American Culture", bit yours is more concise. I only recommend a longer title because we have been trained to judge whether ot not we will engage further by reading titles, and your title may not be specific enough to draw attention. The idea should be taught at every post secondary institution, unfortunately, the opposite philosophy is commonplace. How to LIE and Fuck Prople Over While filling Your Heart With Hate and Eroding From the Inside Out should be the name of Business Ethics. Sorry, but I have anger issues. But I love your idea.
Thanks! The point would be to allow people who have been programmed with grievance and resentment in college to embrace gratitude and self-reliance to make their lives better. Similar ideas to Jordan Peterson, for a general audience, but specifically designed to counteract Critical Theory, Critical Pedagogy and other socially poisonous DIE culture.
That is funny. I bagan re-reading 12 rules for life just this morning
Sorry to say, but the medical establishment doesn't want smart thinkers. They want robot puppets. To be replaced by AI down the road.
I've been saying to people for a while that if docs are going to follow guidelines like robots, act like cogs in a government-run medical machine, and stop thinking for themselves, then we can and will be replaced by AI. An old-fashioned doc who got to know his patient and respect that patient's wishes can't be replaced by a robot.
Would it surprise anyone if right under the quota banner proudly displayed at TMU prominent space is give to MLK Jr.'s quote?
A possible perverse untended consequences of identity politics policies is when it spills over into common knowledge that the system is pumping out mediocre quota doctors a rational person will avoid any doctor with a name whose ethnicity is common to quotas. People will always wonder if theirs is a token doctor.
Folks, embrace the decline. It has to get worse before it gets better. But this will take a long time.
Like real bad and long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFfTludf0SU
I love Idiocracy!!
And although I didn't know they had used the MLK quote, it's not surprising that they would, while behaving in a way that is 180 degrees from what he preached for.
Just so I'm clear, I don't know if they did (probably not). I'm just saying it wouldn't surprise me if they did. Cognitive dissonance can strike at any given time.
This is why I was glad to see that my surgeon for a recent major procedure went to med school in Israel. Pretty sure they're not lowering their standards there like we are in North America.
AFAIK although Israel has gone woke in some ways they still have a more functional education (including medical education) system. Perhaps there is a reader who knows the answer to this?
Pretty sure Jessica Rose went to University in Israel. Jessica seems well educated, but she would be brilliant either way, so maybe we can ask her?
I did try to research this before I posted. One interesting article I found was from the NYT about Israeli schools trying affirmative action based on socioeconomic class rather than race or other such characteristic.
I would also be curious to hear from readers who have more direct knowledge about this.
The good ones have all left the profession because of vax mandates
https://jphe.amegroups.org/article/view/10313?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email and the remainder are glorified pharma sales representatives.
Pierre Kory's Medical Musings on substack has recently written an article about whether (or not) recent medical interventions could be causing physicians to be making medical mistakes.
My son has noticed certain classmates are expecting to get into medical school while barely passing human physiology class, likely a symptom of " overt racial quotas for medical school admissions".
And the bar has been lowered with respect to the quality of medical school educarion?
It is likely that all of these factors, in one way or another, result in a decline in the quality of public healthcare.
So basically, to ensure we have competent doctors we patients now need to look for doctors who are white or of Chinese ethnicity and at least 40 years old to know they had to achieve the higher scores.
Where we need equity for doctors is in paying for the escalating university costs because only kids from wealthier parents can study or they have to take on huge debts. I think provinces should have a deal where they pay 75% of the tuition fees in exchange for the student signing a contract to work for X years within the province. But keep the admission standards high and the performance standards high through the studies and training. Or something to that effect - I’m not a doctor so I don’t know the best criteria. I just know some kids from low incomes who would have made great doctors - very smart and hardworking - but couldn’t take on the debt.
PS: banks will give you enough money to get through med school (and more!) once you present them with your letter of acceptance. And we docs make a gazillion dollars so can easily pay the debt back once we finish. The only people I knew who got behind the financial eightball were the type who took out massive loans during med school to buy high-end cars and houses, go on nice vacations, etc. Julie and I lived a very basic life, rented modest apartments, didn't own a car (walked/biked/bus), didn't eat out, etc. I was able to pay off our large loans within a year and a half of starting work, even though she was still finishing school (specialist training is longer)
Absolutely people can survive the debt. Neither of The Pairodocs came from wealth. Julie's dad was a sheet metal worker and her mom a hairdresser. My dad was a teacher. The one part of my university my parents paid for was a 50$ one-way train ticket to go there after high school. After that I was on my own.
There are 2 issues that get conflated here. The majority of med students come from upper income families. This makes it appear that poorer kids don't go to med school because they can't afford it. But if that's an issue at all, it's tiny. The reason that most med students come from upper-SES families is well outlined in Charles Murray's "Coming Apart". Society is much more technical and thus IQ and income are more closely correlated over the last few generations. Add to that the fact that marriages are much more selected now to mate high IQ men with high IQ women. And IQ is very genetic. Put that all together and what happens is that smart, rich people beget smart kids. The kind of kids who absorb their work ethic, do well in school, and are far more likely to get into med school. The idea of an "adversity score" is to mitigate against this, but what it does instead is to let in people with (on average) lower IQ's.
I highly recommend "Coming Apart", even though the conclusion (that I reached, at least) is that this societal stratification is inevitable. Maybe not though - you may feel differently after reading it.
So, the people running government are also in this probable "dummy" cohort as the oldies are gone now. This explains so much.
What a disastrous situation we as consumers (patients) are in. It feels like Russian Roulette to me. Thank you for this post PairODocs. You are absolutely correct on this entire article and I hadn't known about all the stats that you provided here. The section under "This should shake your faith in the medical profession" is how I have been feeling for a longggg time. On a scale of 1-10 my faith used to be about 4-5 and since the covid debacle it is 1 and 1 it will remain by the info you have shared here.
I would be remiss if I didn't say there are a lot of good docs out there. You just have to do some work to find them.
I agree that there are some good ones (there are several who have spoken out in these last 4 years) that I wish were able to take patients. If not for them, it can be a hit or miss unless you get a referral name from someone you trust and then since there is a waiting list, you may never get to have that doctor.