Heartbreak truth

There is an article "When the Doctor Is in, but You Wish He Wasn't" published in New York Times on November 30, 2005 written by GINA KOLATA. The topic has touched many readers and the letters from readers are grouped under the title "Being a Patient Reader Letters" published on Dec. 7, 2005. If you miss these articles, it is better to have a look.

It is great to see so many responses from patients, patients' family member as well as doctors and we can have different opinion to learn.The unfortunate truth is that doctors are forced to spend less time with patients due to hospital management and insurance bodies. Certainly, we cannot blame all doctors, hospitals or insurance companies alone.

If a hospital is run as business, there is no way to avoid the problem of costing control and the target for making profit. It is certain that no one would have a way to solve this problem. But, will it be worse in the future?There are many reasons and patients are not completely innocent. Same as every sector in our society, there are good and bad members. I have seen a story some times ago about a family of doctors who had to give up their profession because the premium for surgery was too high. Doctors might make mistakes. To avoid facing huge compensation, the only way is to have insurance. Same as every insured topic, premium would be raised against huge compensation to keep the insurance company profitable.

I think that the core problem is the medication has to run as business. Business must have profit and costing must be controlled one way or the other. America may be the first country to face this problem and it is certain that other places like Hong Kong would follow the same path in the coming future. Governments just cannot bear the continuous surging medical cost.

As I have said the best way we can have is to avoid being sick, that is, to be healthy for the lifetime.