People love movies about underdogs. We like watching Harry Potter get picked on because we know that he fights back in the end.

Underdogs create great stories, but they do not stay under forever.

Medical schools look for students who seem able to care.

Do they have empathy? Are they lovers or fighters?

Journalism and law schools look for different things.

Med schools err on the side of sensitivity, even if it means that some gentle souls might burn out now and then. Better that than a class full of fighters and advocates.

It wasn’t always this way. In the olden days, good grades guaranteed a spot. Schools didn’t weed out the way they do now. Each class formed a cross-section of everyone who did well in school and wanted to become a doctor.

Medical school interviews changed all that. Doctors trained since 1990 have been selected for sensitivity. They have endured extensive psychosocial training. They have been selected and trained for professional deference. Continue reading “Patients Need Champions, Not Doormats”

The World Record for solving a Rubik’s Cube is 4.73 seconds. My kids can do a 2×2 in under a minute. I have never solved a Rubik’s Cube.

Inequality has existed for as long as we have.

The Greeks developed philosophy, literature and architecture when Britain was filled with “…illiterate tribal peoples, living at a primitive level.”

The Chinese invented “…the compass, printing, paper, rudders and the porcelain plates that the West call ‘chinaware’…” centuries before Europeans (Wealth, Poverty and Politics, by T. Sowell).

Equality

Some use income to measure fairness and morality. High incomes indicate greed and oppression.

Economic egalitarians believe in equal economic outcomes, regardless of effort and circumstance.  Egalitarians oppose meritocracy. Continue reading “Equality, Relativity and Democracy”

Near the end of Wonder Woman, Steve, Diana’s romantic interest, steals a plane full of poison gas.

Warning: spoiler alert.

He blows up the plane, saves the world and dies a hero. Then Diana blows up Ares, saves the universe and grieves her loss, a tragic heroine.

It’s tempting to see life as a battle between good and evil.

Bad political parties make bad decisions, all the time, which is bad. We should fight them, all the time, because that is good.

If bad parties do something good, it probably isn’t good, because they are bad.  If we cannot see the bad in what they do, it is because they hid it, which is bad. So we should oppose them, which is good.

Healthcare is Political

After 50 years of state healthcare in Canada, some people can only see healthcare in black or white. They have watched governments twist healthcare left and right, with each election.

Politicians often twist it just to win elections. So some voters feel justified complaining about everything in healthcare, especially if they hate the party in power.

But no one is wrong about everything all of the time. Even a stopped clock is right two times each day. Continue reading “Political Survival in Medicare”