Pat’s Polemics

My primary care physician is switching over to a Wellness Plan where you pay a yearly fee and it reduces her case load. She’s at 2500 patients now, which she says is the norm for the area, and the plan will allow her to spend time with each patient. My wife is staying with her but since I seldom see a doctor, I’m bailing. Cheaper.
BUT, I will miss her. She is a very engaging person. We spent a long time today talking about the medical practice and what she thinks the biggest obstacle to good patient care is (surprise, surprise: the insurance companies) and what could change for this country (not much, considering the heavy money involved in the current system). She graduated med school owing $3.00 – that three dollars – but she went in another country. My wife says she ranks #34 in our area out of hundreds of doctors. She is excellent.
She is also gorgeous. I’m really going to miss her. But I will accompany my wife when she goes and so will get a chance to keep up with her attempts to teach her son their language. We had discussed the language earlier and my attempts to say something and so I brought a book to show her the phrases I was trying to say. She was surprised that her son had asked her to teach him and I asked her if she had a book, and so I gave her the one I had brought (a descriptive rather than pedagogical grammar, unfortunately). I’ll get the book back since my wife is continuing with her.
I asked her if she thought the medical profession would eventually be at 50% foreigners and she admitted she didn’t see American kids willing to spend all the time in school for professional degrees when they can make decent money going out into the workforce. I mentioned a kid I’d talked to yesterday who dropped out his junior year to pursue sales.
We discussed the unlikelihood that Americans would approve a European-style socialized medicine policy and I told her of my experience teaching government classes – few Americans pay much attention and so are at the mercy of politicians. She asked what it takes to teach people to think and I said I liberal arts program but it needs to start in elementary school. She asked what that was and I explained and told her how I had followed a friend from high school through grad school in engineering, tutoring him in the humanities and other requirements and how it wasn’t enough to teach him to think critically. And yes, you can specialize and still get a liberal arts education but it requires a balanced education program from the beginning and Americans are not about to do that.