The argument about whether physicians have a moral obligation is getting interesting. Michael Jackson's personal physician charged $150,000 a month to be at his side. A doctor responds, one who has clearly fallen victim to the flawed morality arguments.
I might remind this reader that everyone is greedy. Since we live in a performance driven world, a world dominated by money, everyone has a selfish desire to increase their economic potential. That includes you Dr Name. That includes Michael Jackson. That includes Michael Jackson's personal physician. You have no qualifications to determine how much money is enough money for someone to earn.
Everyone has a right in this country to earn what someone is willing to pay them. That means if General Motors is willing to pay a high school graduate $80,000 in wages and benefits to put cars together, a high school graduate has every right to earn $80,000. If someone is willing to pay Brad Pitt thirty million dollars plus royalties to be in a movie, Brad Pitt has every right in this world to collect his thirty million dollars.
If Michael Jackson is willing to pay his personal physician $150,000 a month to be his personal physician, both have every right to agree to that contract. You do not have any right to call him greedy. Greed is defined by your value system, not theirs. And you have no right to judge your value system better than theirs. Some folks may feel a doctor who makes $50,000 a year is greedy based on their value system. Would you agree with that assertion? Would you feel greedy taking home $50,000 a year while the high school grad takes home eighty grand?
That being said, I see serious flaws with the rest of your argument.
- Just about every profession in this country is granted monopolistic licensure. If you want to be a teacher, you have to be licensed in most districts. If you want to be a vet, you have to be licensed. If you want to be a stock broker you must license with state and federal agencies and meet their requirements. If you want to run your own business, you must obtain appropriate licenses demanded by government agencies. If you want to be a lawyer, you must be licensed. If you want to be a full professor, you must be pass credentialing as determined by the academic institution. To single out physicians as a monopoly is ludicrous. Every field has license requirements. Remember, it's the state and federal government who requires licensure, not physicians. I would gladly waive my $75 a year to license with the state, and my $500 to license with the DEA. Just tell me how.
- If you want to say I am morally obligated to provide care because I have a monopoly based on licensure, than I must also assume you feel all teachers, veterinarians, stock brokers, small business men and women, lawyers and professors are morally obligated to provide me their services as well. I wait for the day that my lawyer feels that way.
- To use the argument that as a physician, tax dollars subsidized my care, therefor I am morally obligated to pay back society, is fatally flawed. You have feed from the trough of entitlement. It's fatally flawed on many levels.
- First, in my career as a physician, I will pay millions of dollars in state and federal taxes. The state may have subsidized my care. I will have paid them back hundreds of times over in my contribution to their tax bill. The state is the real winner, not I in absolute dollar amounts, In fact, the state should be PAYING medical students who stay in their state to practice. The state wins hands down with a return on their investment of tens of thousands of percent.
- If you believe that physicians have a moral obligation to take care of patients because they received a state tax subsidy, you must also believe that every graduate of a state fund college has a moral obligation to provide their service to the general public. That means every engineer must work for the state. Every lawyer must work for the state, or grant uncompensated service to the general public. Every professor trained at a state university must only teach at state funded colleges. Everybody who ever trained at a state funded college has a moral obligation to provide their service to the general public. This is clearly ludicrous. Everybody who trained at a state funded college would be forced to work for government, out of a moral obligation to pay back their debts (subsidized loans) to society.
- If doctors who trained at state funded colleges have a moral obligation to provide care to the public, what about doctors who trained at private institutions? Are we now basing moral obligations on economics instead of morality? I need say nothing more. This moral argument immediately breaks down. It therefor has nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with economics. You feel physicians owe the public only if they used state tax dollars. That's an economic argument (fatally flawed, see #1) and not a moral argument.
- You call medicine more than just a job. A higher calling to help those in need. One could say the same thing about nurses. One could say the same thing about defense lawyers. One could say the same thing about clergymen and women. One could say the same thing about the Red Cross. One could say the same thing about the local grocery who hands out free vegetables on Sundays between 1-2 pm. One could even say the same thing about your garbageman, your lawn man and your postal worker. Your higher calling, is based on your value system. The federal government gives physicians no special "Higher Calling" tax breaks. It gives them no special protection against civil or criminal acts. God gives them no free pass into the pearly gates. In the world of morality, every one is treated the same. What makes a doctor a good person is no different than what makes the crack addict a good person. You seem to believe physicians have a calling. To that I say everyone has a calling. Physicians are not special by any means. And the expectation of their specialness is based on a lack of understanding morality.
- If Michael Jackson's physician is money driven, to that I say who cares. You should not concern yourself about the moralities others choose to live. His morality may be different than your morality. That does not make yours anymore right than his. By judging him as greedy, you are showing your own moralistic flaws. That doctor has every right to charge what ever he wants, to see one patient or 1000 patients a day, and to create contracts of care with whomever he wants for however much he wants. Now, if he wants to get into contracts of care with third parties which dictate how much money he can make, he has every right to do that as well. That's the beauty of freedom.
