Our Doctor Crime-Wave of '09 Sadly Continues into the New Decade

It would have been nice to report that the 11,000 physicians found guilty of serious misbehavior, between the years 2000-2009, was a strange fluke, unlike any other time in our nation's history.

It would have been terrific to relate that the 2,490 doctors convicted just last year alone, of Murder & Drug-running, Medicare Fraud, Child Molestation and secretly filming their nude patients, for example was, well, surely not the norm.

It would have been super, and it would have been wrong. There are more bad doctors than at any other time in our nation's history.

The ugly fact is that physician crime in America has reached eye-popping proportions. This bizarre-world tangent of our highest educated health providers now costs taxpayers 1/2 trillion dollars each year, just in law enforcement expenses.* Add the 100,000 unnecessary surgeries per year, the shameful pillaging of Medicare? Well, the sheer volume of the insanity is almost impossible to comprehend, which just might be why most of us don't. Too many crummy facts might make our literary heads explode.

But as you continue in your writing efforts, here are two ignoble distinctions that one ought keep in mind when you set your next medical appointment:

1. Last year, an estimated 44,000 citizens died because they had no medical insurance. But 180,000 died because they did.**

2. Being medically treated in America is considerably more likely to kill you than car crashes & bee stings, lightning strikes & gunshot wounds COMBINED.***

We didn't hear any of this during the Health Care Reform debates, did we? Ever wonder why?

Stay safe, all, and remember: Never allow a lab coat to trump your common sense.

* U.S. Dept. of Justice Annual Report, 2009

** Harvard Medical Study, 2009

*** Center for Disease Control annual report, 2007