Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
Next time someone tells you that socialized medicine works such a treat in France, you might wish to point out the latest debate in these parts:
Veterinarians should replace doctors in the French countryside, where GPs are an increasing rarity, a politician says.
France is often cited as having one of the best health systems in the world, but a survey has revealed a dearth of doctors in the countryside.
Francoise Tenenbaum, the vice president of Burgundy's regional council, said she had come up with a "revolution" that could solve the shortage.
"Why not call on vets?" said the Socialist politician and deputy mayor of Dijon. "By offering them an extra year's training, they could intervene in medical centres. It's sub-medicine, you may say, but in a rural milieu I'm sure it would be well accepted by the local population." ...
Alain Houpert, a Burgundy councillor from UMP, the rival conservative party, said the suggestion was "shocking."
"Does Madame Tenenbaum know that in case of a fracture, the vet knows only one remedy: a (lethal) injection or the slaughterhouse? That is a curious way of treating people."
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
It's a great way to create an artificial shortage of veterinarians. If they liked people, they would've become physicians.
Sep '10
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
Price fixing causes shortages, we have problems with rural docs in this country too...some would no doubt use that fact as a counter argument but its for the same reason, government interfering with the price mechanism...I guess the thought of some things that people can't afford is just too horrible to contemplate, so everybody gets the glue factory.
Aug '11
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
I don't know many doctors, here in Spain, but one that I did hear in a group conversation, seemed to imply that lawyers had ganged up with politicians (the other elite class,) and managed to turn what once was an elite profession into just another league of 'funcionarios' [functionaries, or ¿bureaucrats?] Without making it any easier or cheaper to become one, so nobody wants to be a doctor anymore, unless they plan on trying to leave Spain, for at least a good portion of their professional career.
I wonder if this person's resentment rings true for other European doctors, and if they would be surprised to find that even pre-Obamacare America's health and economic systems really aren't so different from the socialized systems they both claim as a human right, and as a woefully mismanaged mess, simultaneously. (Similarly to how many simultaneously hold the contradictory opinions that the US is a horrible place, with no culture, and love to incorporate any and all bits of American culture they can get, at an inflated price?)
Edited on December 17, 2011 at 2:14pmMar '11
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
Frenchies may be too high-brow for vets, but really a vet's just an MD who had to learn about a few dozen more species. And it's a great line, but the average vet does actually learn how to set a fracture, at least here in the US. Maybe you don't want one as your OBGYN, but most of our mechanics are present in other animals too.
Plus, Hershel seemed to do alright in The Walking Dead.
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
Oddly enough, we just had this debate here at Casa Berlinski. My father agreed with you.
Sep '10
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
I don't know if vets will work out, but I suspect it will be a great improvement over no one. In any case, as conservatives we should always be thinking that supply side solutions are out there as well. I have pondered on this in the past and I have a few ideas.
1) Move the MD curriculum to 4 + 2 years to attract more doctors. Some schools already offer this.
2) A new class of medical practitioner (MP) which has all the abilities of a doctor but less training. This person could be limited in some ways but the less the better.
3) More generally gov't loans for college are a blooming disaster. Loans should be limited to 1/3 of school costs for students regardless of need, with the exception of science grads. This would force talented kids of no means to choose majors that we need rather than those that we dread.
If we could do this now perhaps we could avoid the vet route.
Edited on December 17, 2011 at 4:04pmMar '11
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
Jackal and Berlinski père are probably right. The mechanics should be mostly the same. Getting into veterinarian school used to be tougher that getting into med school, however.
Still, it gives one pause. I'm not sure I'm ready for the doctor to say "turn your head and whinny."
May '10
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
I agree, and go you several steps better. In the information age, the way basic medicine is practiced is like using horses for primary transportation. If we handled software and computer support the way we handle basic primary medical care, computers would look like your 1990 desktop, and you would be on hold with Microsoft looking for help on getting your printer recognized via the parallel port.
The vast majority of primary care- not serious in extremis treatments- can be handled by low level nurses, plus a sensor suite, and a computer plugged into a wiki database. I can tell you stories from when I was doing clinical rotations, and also give you parallel examples from the legal world of how you delegate processes down to less costly levels.
Credentialed practitioners with an economic and referential stake in the status quo fight this (RE legal profession, look at the ridiculous state licensing rules passed by lawyer legislators and ABA lawsuits against computer programs such as "It's Legal"). Medicine does this as well- it's all about money and crony capitalism regulation.
When something can't continue, it won't. But the war isn't easy.
Sep '10
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
I shrugged and thought, this might work—in a crunch and if malpractice disappears. In any event, it certainly suggests another big bummer for our future: a dearth of physicians mixed with the politicization of all medical protocols.
Jul '11
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
Well I'm at the office now, got called in so here I am. Just finished an emergency visit from a man I sent to the ER with an abdominal surgical emergency. He has coronary disease, asthma, hypertension, diabetes, severe chronic immune deficiency on intravenous immune globulin, as well as 20 other lesser diagnoses and is on 14 medications (egad I hate that). There is no way on God's green earth a vet or a nurse practitioner could put together and handle what I did for the last hour.
With that said, a good vet could easily be trained to do basic human medicine in 6 months. Yes their knowledge base and understanding is similar minus the fact that they haven't seen and examined the vast array of human diseases.
We are moving to lesser trained folks with flow charts and computers. They are coming to a wal-mart near you. Falling by the wayside will be the genuine art of history taking and physical exam. The man this morning I just saw would have been easily misdiagnosed(with potentially lethal consequences) in an urgent care by a physician,let alone a physician extender with lesser training.
Jul '11
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
As far as rural areas go, some docs just love it but they are few. I did it for years but like being near to specialists and bigger hospitals.
Primary care is the least financially rewarding profession with an average salary of 160K but this all varies. A cardiologist can easily make 500K, an orthopedist 750K while a gastroenterologist can make 1 million/yr. Primary care is also massively overburdened with red tape. Very few choose to enter it now compared to when I did and they have good reasons. The desire for meaningful relationships is hampered by the sheer volumes demanded to stay afloat as well as the paperwork. Couple that with an insurance system that demands a myriad of forms to justify drug x or test y and it further deteriorates what should be a rewarding profession.
I for one am greatly in favor of nurses, physician assistants or some new class or classes of practitioners getting the brunt of simple encounters in areas that need practitioners. The problem for primary care will be to adjust to this phenomenon and not have our quality of life deteriorate even further.
Dec '10
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
Claire, this would be hysterically funny if it wasn't so horrific. Obamacare is guaranteed to create a huge shortages of Docters, for that matter all trained health care professionals. Once given enough authority the Health Care System generates it's own insane rationing system as in your example. Obamacare will give the Health Care Bureacracy plenty of authority to do just that.
We must torpedo Obamacare before it torpedos us.
Dec '10
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
Based on my extensive, generally successful, experiences solving complex lambing problems equipped with only a couple of bales of hay, a bottle of Crisco oil and a 5 lb bag of sugar, I'm pretty sure the veterinary solution would bring down the high cost of healthcare right quick. . .
May '10
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
Horse appears on many French menu's as a dish (check out the specialist boucheries chevalines). I assume that French Veterinarians acting as doctors; will now see the listing of Long Pig on the menu, as young men/women with a torn achilles/forelock will now have screens placed around them, followed by a gunshot, with a delivery made to the boucheries humaine.
Edited on December 18, 2011 at 2:03pmSep '11
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
My first reaction is to take exception to Duane's sarcastic remark (above, in #8) about using horses as a means of primary transportation. Some of us on Richochet, ahem, still do.
My second reaction is that--as a safety official for the U.S. Eventing Association, I probably spend more time with veterinarians than most people on Ricochet. While I won't question the blase dismissal of vets by the two doctors who have commented, let me point out that neither of them has probably ever been kicked by a patient. (And if you ever have had an unruly patient, you wouldn't be able to keep him in line with an ear twitch.)
In fact, vets have been doing human "physick" in rural areas for a long, long time. Not necessarily surgery--but a lot of what keeps your livestock healthy is sound medicine for you. Balanced nutrition, exercise, proper hydration, paying attention to vital signs--and particularly close attention to digestive processes--is beneficial for humans as well as livestock. A wise vet sends a lot of patients to the doctor--a wise doctor pays attention when he does.
Jul '11
Re: Would Monsieur Prefer a Lethal Injection or the Slaughterhouse?
Point taken John, I was not attempting to dismiss the high level of care and knowledge of that profession at all. Anyone smart enough to be a vet can go to med school but clearly choose their calling. In a fashion I was responding to post 8 and I was still a touch excited. Also I worked in a psych ward in New Orleans and most certainly have been kicked, though not by lethal hooves.