Physician-Patient Arbitration Agreement

The medical profession is already behind the EightBall.  They present a public image the likes of which no self respecting professional should choose for himself. Then, there was yesterday, when...

...my next best hope of having a 9yr old painful ulcer removed from my thumb was dashed when Dr. Stewart Brown dissed me for not signing a patient arbitration agreement, and then played even more hardball.

But before I hit that collision, consider :

First, the AMA supports and defends continued legalisation of elective abortion. This puts them in the "Barbaric With Blinders" category.  The blinders are necessary for their continued comfort imagining ways poor people will just go away, because, darn it if those poor people make the average MD's life miserable. If they can be killed off genocidally in the womb, unabashed Sanger eugenics and all, so much better off will the average physician be. WHY do medical practitioners assume people will respect THAT? I for one cannot. No respect due them. Nada. None.

Second, they take no sane position on health care reform, tending to settle for whatever status quo guarantees them the best chance of earning opulent salaries rather than promoting an historic call to "serve" others in the best Judeo-Christian tradition out of which hospital care arose in the first place.

Thirdly, they administer a pro-vaccine agenda that harms many with the justification that all of humanity is one giant evolutionary herd in need of management using the agricultural "cull the herd" mentality: it's OK to lose a few victims when the interest of the "greater good" is paramount, and individual rights are messy notions that get in the way of effective herd welfare. When that victim is you, and you spend five years lobbying for PERMISSION to see specialists because a simple flu shot just ended your life as you had known it, this bummer takes on a whole new dimension.

Now, the latest wrinkle: before I left Dr. Stewart Brown's office after being told he refuses to treat

Does his staff need to know I am "Up Nights to Urinate" if I am not even their patient?

anyone who will not sign away their right to traditional malpractice arbitration, the front staff refused to give me back my paperwork.  "What is the reason for this?" I asked. They would not answer.

I had not seen any medical professional, they had given me back my Co-Pay, I had not trespassed beyond the lobby window. . . Did my thumbing through Architectural Digest in the waiting room somehow disqualify me from all privacy rights?  Was it my irritable comeback when they first claimed that I should've JUST KNOWN that service would be denied anyone who fails to kiss the doctor's arse? To be fair, I did deem to rewrite their cover letter for them, verbally inserting the preferred edit that should've been included in the mailed packet so their policy would be crystal CLEAR to prospective patients.  They didn't like me deigning to edit their paperwork for them, methinks. Crazy people. I could've charged them $55 for that service, but I gave it away for free.

Then they said that I wasn't allowed to have my paperwork returned.  Excuse me? I gently pushed back. And I mean, really gently, since I had just come off of a three hour Bible Time in Malachi and Luke, and my spirit was feeling really soft and squishy. Almost totally not the doctor-hater-unbidden-copy-editor-privacy-rights-activist-confrontationalist I usually am.

She then shoved a photo copy of my personal information through the window.  Wait, I said. This is a photo copy? I am not asking for a copy of my own information. I am not your patient, remember? I'd like the original back, please. She said she had to go ask the office manager.  I think I see the game being played here.  They want to bill my insurance company anyway, even w/o actually seeing me. After some three or four minutes, she gives me back the original.  I am sure they just made another copy.  As I am half way to the elevator outside, it occurs to me that they've kept the yellow Medical History portion of the paperwork.  Whoa. ANOTHER invasion of my privacy! I go back yet again.  Office girl insists that's not mine to have, either.  Let me speak to your office manager, I say.  Office manager comes back and gives me the evil eye.  Then the MD, Mr. Stewart Brown himself, loiters in and gazes at me inconspicuously.  MY. It's a power play.  If they are trying to intimidate me, it's working. But I just kept taking nice long breaths of air and holding my ground.

"I am not your patient. You are not my doctor, I have been seen by NO one, and you have no right to my medical history." Front Office Girl tells me to hang on while she makes a phone call. I wait. She takes her time and, after another three or four minutes, she leaves to find the Office Manager again.  Then they don't come back for a long while.  I imagine they are now photocopying this, too.  When saucy blonde Office Manager hands me back my yellow Medical History, she makes no eye contact, no apologies, no  explanations.  I beg her to tell me: Did you photo copy this one, too? She blubbers something about the white copies but doesn't actually answer my query about the yellow.  I just stand there in disbelief, wanting to drill my eyeballs deep into hers and use the classic Celebrate Recovery line that gets them every time: "ARE YOU LYING TO ME?" But, I resist.  She is glaring at me with such venom that I am sure any further inquiry would lead to something naughty emanating from my mouth.  So I thank her and leave.  I did indulge in a little prideful sentiment as I finally took my exit: "SCAREEEY..." I whispered under my breath as I pulled on the heavy door.

I just can't resist getting in the last word. . . So, I am wondering: If I had the self controlled temperament to always handle conflict with poise, would life still be such a scandalous affair?

But, I mean, really? To have a front office staff tell me that my own personal information, details of which took me 1.5 hrs to dig out of my home medical files, is no longer mine just because I had the misfortune of darkening the door of a paranoid doctor? I feel like having someone arrested.  I feel violated; and once again, it's the "worship us because we are god-like" medical community demanding that I cowtow.

LORD, Holy God, may I dare to ask you to exact a coup in the med schools of this SICK and sorry nation, and require of all medical students and professionals a course IN THE U.S. CONSTITUTION?

≈ Amen?