Can Reform Help This Kind of Health Care?

I just a chilling article about two nurses in West Texas who anonymously reported to the Texas Medical Board a doctor in their hospital who was peddling his own herbal remedies to patients as well as neglecting his official duties and, basically, practicing bad medicine.

Seems the Good Doc, however, was in cahoots with the local sheriff in the herbal remedy racket. Said sheriff then swooped in, seized computers, found the nurses, charged them with crimes, got them fired, and now they're out on $5,000 baiil awaiting trial.

Herbal remedy sales are still booming throughout the ordeal, evidently.

However sad this sordid little tale is, what is even more shocking is how widespread deliberate malpractice is. Chew over this tidbit:

Medical professionals, especially nurses who are generally lower on the food chain, so to speak, are increasingly reticent to speak out when they see unsound, unethical or corrupt things going on in healthcare. It is hard to do the right thing. They know and see the consequences of following their consciences and the Code of Ethics. This is not an isolated incident. Three California nurses were suspended after they reported a doctor who later admitted giving a lethal injection to a child and another nurse was threatened with firing after refusing to follow a doctor’s verbal order to administer morphine until a patient stopped breathing.

When our health care system fires people who want to do good and right while it protects the evil-doing doctors, then we clearly need more than health care reform. We need to stay healthy enough so that we never have to go to a hospital. Here's to dying like Bing Crosby--falling over dead while playing golf on a course in Spain.