Archive for May, 2007
Do Doctors Care Anymore?
Since the advent of the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) decades ago, the connection between patient and doctor has become increasingly slight.
As a kid I went to a family doctor whose office was around the corner. His office was in a single-story building with cedar shingle siding. All the machines inside stood out like 10-penny nails on a plank of pristine pine because of their bright white color and modern shapes. My hometown was very rural and going to the doctor was like going to an important meeting in a science laboratory. What was most pleasant about going to the doctor was that he remembered me, seemed to take his time finding out what I was suffering from and asked about my family, school and all the other stuff. I felt…
Change Requires Conversation
A few weeks ago syndicated radio host Don Imus was fired for making degrading remarks about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. By almost any standard other than his own maybe, his remarks were regarded as racist. So, after a short brouhaha played out in the media, Imus was fired. MSNBC dropped his program from television and CBS fired him from their network. Not long after I asked readers in this blog why they thought he was fired.
At the time this was national news. Why? I thought at the time that something shifted in the nation’s consciousness–that flagrantly racist ideas spouted by media figures are not acceptable. I wonder if anything has changed though.
Critics of both CBS and MSNBC said others with a public pulpit had long been denigrating blacks,…
