by Sezin Koehler

Created on: June 02, 2008

Currently there is a lot of talk about informed consumers and how individuals are becoming more and more aware of the variety of choices regarding what and how they will consume. The same should hold true for doctors, even though it tends not to. In effect, you as a patient are the only person who has lived through all of your medical experiences. If you have traveled or moved a lot then it's possible that your documented medical history is not entirely complete. You are the only one who is able to fill in those blanks, and in many ways you need to already have an idea of what you will or will not accept as treatment upon entering a doctor's office, even if the doctor notes that their recommendation is the only one that will work. The question at hand is not only about distrusting your doctor with your life and your health, it is about knowing yourself and trusting that you in fact know what is best for your body. Sadly, your doctor doesn't really care about the long term effects his/her treatment might cause, but you indeed should because for better or worse you will be the one living with it for years to come.

In this day and age of privatized medicine and HMOs, it is quite rare you will actually see the same doctor more than once. You will have very little long term interaction with any doctor whose office you enter, and right off the bat this should make you wary of what they tell you. How can a person who spends not even five minutes with you be able to know what's best for you better than you do? How will that person even begin to understand the intricacies of your medical history? In the medical cattle calls we dub hospitals, the key is to move the patient out as quickly as possible and bill them for absolutely anything that can be gotten away with. The industry of medicine has been transformed from a healing enterprise into a money-making activity, so how can you logically put 100% of your trust into a doctor when their bottom line involves cash, not a cure?

Furthermore, due to the lack of personal attention and customer service given to us by doctors, a number of other reasons to have a healthy distrust of doctors also arise. Doctors these days will lean towards the most simplistic or obvious of diagnoses in order to get you out of their office as quickly as possible, or, on the flip side, they will test you for everything under the sun for no apparent reason in order to be able to bill you thousands of dollars for services rendered. They will tend towards

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