Typing that title actually made me feel better - I’m so juvenile!
So I was at physical therapy today, where yes, part of my care is soft tissue work to release spastic muscles around my SI joint, and I was complimenting my therapist on the office’s practice model. I commented that people probably feel really attached to her (she’d mentioned patients sending thank you notes and stuff) because the experience is much more warm and fuzzy due to them spending more time on you, really focusing on you as a person and what’s happened in the last week (or less - also seeing people often and for a long time period is nice), versus seeing a GP who typically has 15 minutes to see you and then basically says, “See you in 12 months! Good luck doing all that stuff I’ve ordered you to do without any further support!”
Naturally, this caused her to compare US healthcare favorably to Australia’s (her home country) public health system, and in doing so actually mention “death panels” in an all-too-ingenuous manner. Since that is such an idiotic topic, I couldn’t resist mentioning that no matter what, resources are limited regardless of the system, it’s just a question of who is acting as a “death panel” and how it’s handled.
Her response was that “she hadn’t seen that” in the US system. So evidently her belief is the free market system magically creates infinite amounts of money and time to spend on healthcare!
But I wasn’t about to get into it with her - this is someone I rely on to take care of me, after all. I used my verbal judo technique of agreeing with a certain small part of what is said and using it to steer the conversation down another path. But it was irksome. Sure, let’s chat about our kids or what we did for Thanksgiving, but please keep the topics neutral for the sake of professionalism!
People from third world nations frequently think like this once they get to America. Her children will no doubt develop a more realistic perspective of the benefits and drawbacks of American capitalism.
You assume that’s a misspelling, but I can assure you that there is a massive class of variant spellings assigned for just these kinds of passive rebuttals.
(Okay, that’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but bare with me.)
Maybe she has a perfect understanding of the American health care system. You’re a patient but she’s a health care professional. She might prefer a system that favors the interests of the people inside the system over patient interests.
