This is a perspective that I continually see dismissed in the wider political landscape. When we say “The American Medical System is fucked” we’re not just talking about getting hit with massive bills.
Ask folks with chronic conditions, who are seeking medical treatment, how they feel about doctors. These aren’t “tinfoil hat looneys” and they know the system well. I’d bet a good amount that the most plentiful opinion will be “fuck them”.
Women and folks of color are constantly neglected in our system. Nuerodiverse folks are constantly abused. Walk with an ADHD person trying to get diagnosed, or get meds refilled. Listen to a patient with chronic pain; with schizophrenia; with anything beyond the generic “anxiety and depression”. Sit with a pregnant woman of color on Medicaid going into labor.
Or look through the two centuries of medical malpractice against women and people of color. Have we forgotten the opioid epidemic? It wasn’t the CEOs handing those prescriptions out. Have we forgotten the horrors of lobotomies and mental wards? The latter still exist. Are we just going to brush over how the queerphobic “Lavender scare” was legitimized by the medical industry? Being trans still is 3 or so mental disorders; and any identity past that point was grounds to get violated before Trump’s reelection, and still is.
I don’t know where this fetishized view of the “ever-trustworthy doctor” comes from, but it’s as detached from reality as the Manosphere’s “happy 50s housewife”.
This is a perspective that I continually see dismissed in the wider political landscape. When we say “The American Medical System is fucked” we’re not just talking about getting hit with massive bills.
Ask folks with chronic conditions, who are seeking medical treatment, how they feel about doctors. These aren’t “tinfoil hat looneys” and they know the system well. I’d bet a good amount that the most plentiful opinion will be “fuck them”.
Women and folks of color are constantly neglected in our system. Nuerodiverse folks are constantly abused. Walk with an ADHD person trying to get diagnosed, or get meds refilled. Listen to a patient with chronic pain; with schizophrenia; with anything beyond the generic “anxiety and depression”. Sit with a pregnant woman of color on Medicaid going into labor.
Or look through the two centuries of medical malpractice against women and people of color. Have we forgotten the opioid epidemic? It wasn’t the CEOs handing those prescriptions out. Have we forgotten the horrors of lobotomies and mental wards? The latter still exist. Are we just going to brush over how the queerphobic “Lavender scare” was legitimized by the medical industry? Being trans still is 3 or so mental disorders; and any identity past that point was grounds to get violated before Trump’s reelection, and still is.
I don’t know where this fetishized view of the “ever-trustworthy doctor” comes from, but it’s as detached from reality as the Manosphere’s “happy 50s housewife”.