Ex-Soviet doc bemoans ‘Sovietization’ of American medicine

Beth Israel endocrinology chief Leonid Poretsky writes:

After the demise of the Soviet Union, former Soviet citizens are able, like patients suffering from allergic disorders, to detect in their present conditions the circumstances that remind them of their experience in the Soviet Union.

As one of these “survivors” who is now an academic physician in New York, I am sensitive to those features of today’s medicine in the United States that are heavily reminiscent of the life “back in the USSR” and that I describe collectively using the term “Sovietization.”2 This term refers primarily to the ever-increasing levels of bureaucratization and propaganda that, as I will attempt to show, threaten the integrity of American medicine.

Read the full article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (Summer 2013) at AAPSOnline.org.

4 thoughts on “Ex-Soviet doc bemoans ‘Sovietization’ of American medicine”

  1. Don’t forget the implanted RFID tags that go along with your new improved Obummercare.

    2006-07-19 Insurers Study Implanting RFID Chips in Patients:
    Hackensack University Medical Center and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey are recruiting volunteers to have an RFID device implanted under the skin.

    The chips, made by VeriChip Corporation, will contain a 16-digit identifying number that can be used to bring up medical and family contact information stored electronically in a database. The chips will be tested in patients with chronic conditions who are more likely to need care in hospital emergency rooms. In the two-year trial, the insurance company will pay about
    $200 for the chips to be implanted, plus $80 a month for a subscription fee, according to reports in the RFID Journal. Horizon will then assess whether the devices lower health care costs by reducing duplicate lab tests, drug interactions or misdiagnoses. Horizon will invite patients with conditions like diabetes and heart disease to participate and hopes to enroll about 300 volunteers. Though non-implanted devices, like bracelets or dog tags, could also provide the identifying numbers, chip proponents said that the implanted tags are less likely to be removed or damaged and that scanning for implants will take less time than looking for other means of identification….

    8/05/13 RFID Chip Now Being Issued In Hanna, Wyoming As Part Of New “Obamacare” Plan: The “Obamacare” RFID chips are currently being given a test run…

  2. I’m with you, comrade!

    But what shall we do with those who oppose the digitization and centralization of all personal information?

  3. I think the good doctor needs to lighten up. There are clear benefits to EMR. These are: records can be mined and analyzed. Perhaps this physician would rather not have his records examined? Ultimately, it will be easier to share medical records when patients change physicians. Billing can be made easier as well. All of this just takes some time. If computers are good for business, why are they not good for the business side of medicine? And then he talks about limiting hours of residents as a bad thing. We do it for pilots? Are medical errors less important? The man is just an old, cranky medical slave driver.

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