I don't understand this Nazification of medicine.
Doctors are teachers, advisors, sometimes surrogate mothers and fathers -- but not drill sergeants.
We are in a free country, where it is not illegal to be stupid, make poor choices, or march to a different drummer. We are not in the Army -- at least I am not.
Where does the idea come from that whatever the insurance company says is law, and that the duty of the doctor is to enforce it?
My patients come to me for advice. Sometimes they take it, sometimes they don't.
Sometimes they are right and I am wrong. It's an ongoing conversation.
Medical orthodoxy is subject to change -- and then what was once ironclad rule becomes anathema. Nowhere is this more glaringly obvious than in the treatment of chronic pain.
It is of course, the right of any physician in a free country to refuse to treat anyone who doesn't agree with him or her -- but I can tell you that my practice is made a lot more interesting by I including people who disagree with me. I learn a lot from those folks.
