The Business of Healing – How Much is a Life Worth?
My uncle is a small-town doctor; he’s well-known, respected and liked in the community. When compared to medical practitioners in larger cities who work for corporate houses and public facilities, he can match them skill for skill – where he falls short is in the money-making category. But he’s not one to let such trivialities affect him or his dedication to his work – he’s always ready to see a patient, at any time of the day or night. He doesn’t care if they have the money to pay him for his time and services; all he thinks about is making them better again.
Used to this kind of homely treatment all her life, a neighbor found a completely opposite experience when she was stuck in the city with a bad case of vomiting and diarrhea. Suffice it to say that she paid a huge price, both in terms of her health and her bank balance. Inundated with drugs that did not help at all (in fact, they ended up giving her an ulcer because they were too strong), and still in pain, she hurried back home as soon as she was well enough to travel, back to the safe fortress that her family doctor, my uncle, represented.
What is with some doctors that they place money above all else, even the lives of the patients they are supposed to treat? Yes, I know that medicine is a business like any other, but what happens when a patient doesn’t have the money to buy the health care that he/she needs? This is where the governments of some Western nations step in with subsidies that allow citizens to a range of medical care facilities at a fraction of their regular costs. Medical insurance helps too, but then, you need to have the money upfront to be able to afford the insurance in the first place.
Worse than the medics who demand to see the money before they offer their services are those who thrive on the illegal trade of human organs – they harvest disposable organs like kidneys to make more than a quick buck. And then there are others who make patients pay through their noses even though there’s nothing wrong with them. They make them undergo tests that are totally unnecessary, they make them spend time in a hospital even though they have very minor ailments, and they make them take drugs that cause adverse side-effects.
There’s a thin line between making money in a medical business and the ethics that govern a healthcare practice, one that’s pretty easy to cross if the lure of money is strong enough, unless you have a strong moral sense that pulls you back.
