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Rave

The Doctor is in...but maybe not to You

Posted 26 months ago|26 comments|587 views
Written by
Gregoire
The story appears here:


http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/loca...

The truth appears here:


"I'm not turning anybody away — that would be unethical," Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Mount Dora urologist and a registered Republican opposed to the health plan, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday. "But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it."

The sign reads: "If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."


The bulls*** starts here:

Cassell may be walking a thin line between his right to free speech and his professional obligation, said William Allen, professor of bioethics, law and medical professionalism at the University of Florida's College of Medicine.

Allen said doctors cannot refuse patients on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability, but political preference is not one of the legally protected categories specified in civil-rights law. By insisting he does not quiz his patients about their politics and has not turned away patients based on their vote, the doctor is "trying to hold onto the nub of his ethical obligation," Allen said.


"Walking a thin line..."

Actually, he's not...he is neither telling patients he will not see them, nor quizzing them about their political stance.

At the heart of all this PC crap is a very simple matter...completely devoid of anything except a desire by one or any group of folks to try and bring governmental sanctions and power down against anyone who "dares not like me".

It has nothing to do with confabulations about hate speech and violence, impeding anyone's access to services or programs...it has everything to do with..."I not only have a right to such and such...and if you express the least hint that you may not be absolutely delighted about who I am and that I do...I'm gonna call the police..."

No, I am not glad that people who believe islands can tip over and capsize have a right to vote. I am not in favor of people who have no idea how economies run and simply see the government as a means of getting as big a TV as their neighbor has by their confiscation of the neighbor's income for redistribution..."by whatever means necessary"


And, I am not inclined to feel sorry for those who demand attention all the while trumping up sympathy with how downtrodden they are by the system...when they precisely use that system to wring the arms of those whose favors they extort...

Now, my saying these things won't change any of it.
And I have no doubts about my need to portray myself as compassionate, I have none.

You wanna sell all you have and give to the poor...wonderful, be blessed...and don't tell anyone about it.
You think everyone else should...good...go pray and ask the Lord to create more generous hearts...you will discover kindness cannot be legislated.

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COMMENTS
scotmanster
scotmanster
26 months ago: Did you know that this crap is occurring in our schools? They are teaching kids if you do not agree with someone then you are not a team player. The whole idea is to make kids feel like they are alienating themselves when they disagree with the majority or the preconceived media majority. You know how they portrayed that all the Tea Parties are just a small bunch of extremest? Talk about indoctrination 101.

Shows you what a gullible generation we have become my niece is on the Deans list in college and makes it every semester you think she would be smart. I asked her why during the McCain / Obama race did the majority of the news channels not cover McCain but Obama was plastered all over the airwaves? Her Deans List answer was becuase McCain did not have anything good to say....

So that is what you call fair and balanced now a days. Seeing how if someone does not have something good to say then they should be alienated! Just shows you college is not about a higher education but it is about a lowering the reasoning level of could have been bright kids. Kudos to that doctor for posting the **** ends here sign on his place of business!
26 months ago: Scot, it's worse than that. My 9 year old brought a note home from school last week. It stated first that my son hit another child in the back. It then described the conflict were my son was first hit and the second punch from my son was self defense. They did not note that my son was hit in the face and the skin was broken causing BLOOD to flow. They also did not refer him to the school nurse for treatment of alleged bloody injury caused by another student during their watch.

My wife and I gave HIGH FIVES to each other and just said to our son don't hit back. Next time hold your head, fall to the ground, cry, and ask for medical attention. That way we can sue.
26 months ago: We live in a dang free country don't we?
26 months ago: I'm not impressed by this man at all, regardless of whom he thinks it's legitimate for citizens to vote for. The "doctor" sounds like less than a professional. He says"If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. " contrasted with his slimy, disingenous statement "I'm not turning anyone away". No, neither is a sign saying "NO Irish, NO Dogs, NO Mexicans, No Homosexuals", strictly turning anyone away.

He doesn't like Obama. Good for him. But he has no idea whatsoever about liberty, democracy and professionalism.
scotmanster
scotmanster
26 months ago: It is not that he has a personal grudge against Obama just that the new Health Care system is that damaging in his point of view. So saying those that voted for Obama , voted for this change and these are the consequences of those actions. But to be honest who looks at a flyer in the doorway? I would say maybe 2 in 10?

Either way he is not turning away anyone. If we degrade this into a black man against a white man then I think we are missing the whole point why he posted the sign in the first place which certainly was not with racist intent but becuase they passed a unconstitutional health care disaster that will hurt him and his patients period.

Why is it every time a white man ridicules a black man does the media jump on the race card? That is were the ratings are. Who wants to watch a boring news show? People need action, deceit, scandals and ect... To hold the viewers short attention span the media serves us just that and nothing less.
26 months ago: Sorry, I shouldn't say "no idea whatsoever". That was unfair. "Some lack of appreciation" is kinder and more accurate.
26 months ago: And, in saying this, I hope he tells everyone he knows why we thinks Obama is bad and pays for billboards. No problem. That wouldn't rate a news story. What he did is another, newsworthy story, that doesn't refelct well on him as a doctor who took the hippocratic oath. I hope every doctor with a barrow to push doesn't pull the same stunt.
Gregoire
Gregoire
26 months ago: You see Jack, some of us are not only post racial...we are post majority.
That means that regardless of whether we believe we have numbers on our side as the convincing evidence of the rightness of our view, we will not stop hollering bull**** and death to the exaltation of mediocrity till our lungs bleed. In fact, I am confident that as appealing as mediocrity is to most, and as sure as I am of its ultimate victory, it is all the more incentive to be spent in resisting it.
If there are sides...those whose hope rests in an appeal or strength of a majority, are actually on the same side...regardless of whether they call themselves progressives or conservatives.
None of this has anything to do with being on a winning side, and to the extent that it does for any of us, I fear we are desperately wrong.
When we try to trump up our numbers, or seek justification of a cause because of the amount of people we can muster in its promulgation...we have already lost.
As always, true victory comes only in announcing the truth...those who see it see it, those who don't cannot be argued or cajoled into it. If there is to be any difference between sides, if you will, that must be it...the truth cannot be proffered nor embroidered with any offer of personal gain to the hearer. The benefit always and only comes by precisely renouncing personal gain in its embrace.
Truth first, benefit if any, later.
The truth is this guy who is being exalted as the compassionate champion of the downtrodden is a fraud, and everything he embraces and proposes in service to that view as savior is equally fraudulent.
The worm is in every apple he polishes on his oratory as he offers it. He is exceedingly clever and practiced in manipulation of the simple, whose obvious numbers and gullibility are far greater than even many of us imagined. He is the perfect construction of this age. All style, no substance. All talk, no walk.
You may, or some may say, no he is clothed in compassion and righteousness.
I say, not at all.
We will see.
markbyrn
markbyrn
 Moderator
26 months ago: Maybe he figures it will drum up business; he's now the most well known Urologist in the country and didn't have to pay nickel for advertising. I'd be concerned though about seeing this dick-doc though; he might buttonhole you to get Jesus or make a donation to his wife's campaign for Lake County commissioner while he's shoving the cathether in.

On the other hand, you got the partisan bamabots on the left posting a petition on change.org to "BOYCOTT MOUNT DORA, FL, UROLOGIST, DR. JACK CASSELL & REVOKE HIS LICENSE TO PRACTICE MEDICINE!"

http://tinyurl.com/ykg79vj
26 months ago: Well, that's a convergence of interests. He can't complain. He's asking half the voting public to boycott him.
Gregoire
Gregoire
26 months ago: Maybe he didn't take the Hippocratic oath.
Maybe he's afraid if too may people come to him it will tip Florida over and he will have to be a kinda Jacques Cousteau urologist.
Maybe he understands that when there's little to no incentive to take responsibility for people's lives, for having paid out the wazoo in time and dollars for schooling and residency, that maybe people will then wake up to the mediocrity they embrace when they want "all things equal".
I like excellence, even if I don't much strive for it myself.
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
26 months ago: Maybe he is just upset that the new programs will try to do something about the huge income disparity between what specialists like he makes and what a general practitioner makes. The new law includes something called Health Care Innovation Zones. It will also try to reduce the payments for procedures with outcome oriented pay.

Starting January 1, 2011, co-payments for Medicare-covered preventative services will be eliminated. In addition, preventative services will be exempted from deductibles. This shouldn't effect a specialist though.

Maybe he is also afraid of the competition when there are more doctors and health care centers. Effective immediately, the bill authorizes money to fund programs intended to increase the number of doctors, nurses, and public health professionals.

Beginning this year, the bill authorizes increased funding for Community Health Centers. It is estimated that the increased funding will allow the Health Centers to double the number of patients they can treat over the next 5 years.
Gregoire
Gregoire
26 months ago: Do you know what outcome oriented pay means?
It means you die.

It's so easy to portray physicians as money grubbing egotists taking advantage of their educations and licenses to print money.
If you are not a physician, or do not work closely with them, you really have no concept of their training, despite recent dramatizations as ER, or even Gray's Anatomy.
Physicians are the Navy Seals in our economy.
Smarts, in some ways, are the least of their requirements...but don't be fooled, a doctor is not just a college grad that decided to go to med school. Competition for med school is fierce and one does not get in unless one's grades are above exemplary. And those grades are not in "underwater basket weaving", but the hard sciences and math that do not allow for long winded essays to "justify your position"...you either get the correct answer or not.
But it is after the 4 years of med school (basic training if you will) further selection for the grueling rigors of residency begins. That's where Seal school starts. That's where the exceedingly long hours, slight pay, and incredible responsibility easily overwhelms any whose commitment is found wanting.
We can joke about people falling asleep standing up, but many physicians lived for years on the odd minutes and few hours they could grab as downtime during their shifts...and the meager amount of off time they were guaranteed. I've watched residents come stumbling out of their sleep room after being awakened for the third or fourth time in a night as the patient in ICU or CCU who stabilized for an hour refuses to remains so.
These same residents are then expected to give a cogent report off on rounds of everyone that was under their care...in an hour or two.
Six years have passed since the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education cut resident workweeks to 80 hours. The council also restricted shifts to 24 hours of call plus six hours of patient transition and educational activities.

Some health leaders said cutting back the weekend-long shifts and 120-hour workweeks that were common before the 2003 rules would yield a safety benefit -- fewer patient deaths and fewer complications. But it is hard to make a definitive, evidence-based argument that the work-hour limits have improved patient outcomes, experts said.

markbyrn
markbyrn
 Moderator
26 months ago: ...It's so easy to portray physicians as money grubbing egotists taking advantage of their educations and licenses to print money...

What an amazing straw man you've invented as though the health care bill wasn't endorsed by the American Medical Association and other medical fraternities. What we have here is a Republican partisan physician with a politico wife who made a first class jack-a-s-s out of himself by turning away patients and than using his fork tongued to cover his a-s-s. What does your sermon about physicians working long hours have to do with the health care plan?

So let's get to brass tacks and it's not for the reasons you're implying. The reason the Urologists collectively weren't happy and the AMA also expressed it's concerns is outlined in a letter from the American Association of Clincal Urologists (AACU) (see link). They were concerned about expanding Medicare without repealing the existing Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) that Republicans crafted in 1997 and has resulted in regular reimbursement cuts (e.g. 21% cut in the upcoming weeks.) The health care bill didn't address that except to drop the medicare expansion and so the SGR problem that existed before the health care bill still exists now.

http://www.aacuweb.org/pdf/2009/Medicare...

On the subject of SGR, the AACU is currently reporting that two Republicans are playing obstructionists to bills that would extend the current Medicare physician payments rates and prevent the looming 21% cut. So it's apparent that the Republicans are the ones that don't understand how hard physicians work.

http://www.aacuweb.org
scotmanster
scotmanster
26 months ago: Why did they wait so long to introduce the bill Mark? Sit here and tell me why?
scotmanster
scotmanster
26 months ago: Call it obstructionism or whatever you like it is the way our Government runs, it is their own fault they waited this long to introduce the bill. Gotta love your blame game!
Gregoire
Gregoire
26 months ago: Right now, doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that's out there. So if they're looking and you come in and you've got a bad sore throat or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, "You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid's tonsils out."

Obama said that.
I may have embellished...after all, Obama would never appeal to class envy.

The AMA represents less than 30% of working docs. But I am pretty sure you knew that Mark.

My sermon about their long hours is simply to put to rest any implication that doctors are well paid because of nature's capriciously making an excess genetic deposit in their cranial vaults.
That is often the plea to those who see themselves as victims and the "have nots"...that others have simply won life's lottery, hard work and accomplishment are never in the equation.
Gregoire
Gregoire
26 months ago: Prior to 2003...120 hour work weeks for residents...were the norm.

Who of us knows anything about working 120 hours a week? Double every one of my shifts and I'm still forty hours short.

Now, regardless of whether one wants to argue how ridiculous and unhealthy such expectations may have been...almost every physician you know went through that kind of training to some extent.

And even the brightest among them in the most demanding specialties and sub specialties that allow for great income...still probably make one to two percent of what Oprah does in a year.

Now, it's true, Oprah helped to screw a whole nation, so she's been a very busy girl, considering the three hundred million of us and all...but don't be amazed that doctors bristle a bit when the one whose ascent she abetted describes docs as making money by doing needless surgeries.
As he is quoted:

Right now, doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that's out there. So if they're looking and you come in and you've got a bad sore throat or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, "You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid's tonsils out."

So, now you have a bill that has become law endorsed by the president and his ilk that, I am reasonably confident, largely share his weltanshauung.

He doesn't realize that he is trying to impose his own will on a group of folks that are, by and large his intellectual, and certainly in personal accomplishment and, I am inclined to believe, his moral betters.

Don't wonder if they refuse, as a group, to lay down for his personal view of Utopia.

If you think I have a rather adoring view of physicians, you need only ask those with whom I work. I am just not as willing to live in a world where Serrano's work is considered the equivalent of Salk's,
or where a silver tongued lawyer imagines he has done more than fool a people.
scotmanster
scotmanster
26 months ago: "Who of us knows anything about working 120 hours a week?"

I can relate when I was working a full forty as a butcher and then turn around and cut up deer for the business I ran I would put 120 hours in a week easily. Plus that 1 week walmart opened I put close to 100 hours in one week my paycheck was a whopping $1,000.00 dollars for that week. Sure was nice come payday time.

Yea physicians get my respect the have earned it.
Gregoire
Gregoire
26 months ago: yes Scott, I didn't mean to imply that none other than a physician could ever have worked that hard or long...but that the rarity of it merits some consideration.
As well you know and appreciate... it is a grueling schedule to say the least.
And you did it as a butcher?
Would hate like heck to fall asleep at that bandsaw!
scotmanster
scotmanster
26 months ago: No I know you didn't mean to imply that just was relating that they definitely have my respect for the amount of grueling hours in for low pay, their voice should be heard. I think you reflected it well that this doctor is not some crazy loon that did not earn his credentials by sitting on his rear. So I really don't get how this can be a straw man argument like Mark is trying to make it. It is probably Bush's fault anyways...
26 months ago: So, coz physicians make less than Oprah, they'll take your tonsills out when they shouldn't, for extra bucks. So, back to the least efficient health care system in the first world, then, I suppose, is the solution?

Otherwise the doctors will kill us in revenge, until they are elevated back to a position above the President.

Gregoire
Gregoire
26 months ago: Jack...that's not the implication at all.
First,the accusation that a doc is gonna do what best lines his pockets vs what is best for the patient is a bit specious coming from this huckster.
The point is that many times physicians...especially surgeons and other interventionalists, will go well above and beyond in treatments and care, often "against the odds" in hopes that a patient may beat them and enjoy either a recovery or better quality of life.
Yes, this often means treatments for many folks that don't benefit much by them, or the benefit is very short lived. But there are the rare cases when going the fifth extra mile results in someone making a healthy comeback, and beating those odds.
Reduce the incentive for doing all you can...while doing nothing to reduce the liability, and you will not only find physicians drawing back, and legitimately so...as opposed to those willing to invest time, talents, skill, and exposure to liability for those in their care.
You really have no idea how much in innovative treatments have come...not from simple experimentation like Frankenstein in a lab...but from docs that have been willing to try every means possible to keep their patients alive. You also have little idea of how many patients are treated gratis.
No, I didn't mean "docs will kill us in revenge..."
It's more like the skewed view Obama would have us embrace, of physicians scheming to make the most by their procedures by needlessly performing surgeries and treatments will do that far more effectively.
26 months ago: Love it Gregoire, always enjoy your posts.
Gregoire
Gregoire
26 months ago: Those are very kind and appreciated words, Jakarta.
Thank you.
Gregoire
Gregoire
12 months ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl1lUJP5wTU

A little education about what a right is.
Gregoire
Gregoire
Content Removed by Gregoire

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