What do we pay for?

Thinking about courts and juries led to a comparison of doctors vs lawyers.

In most products and services we pay for improvement. Food that gives us more taste and nutrition, entertainment that gives us more pleasure, cars that give us more enjoyable travel.

In earlier decades, both lawyers and doctors matched this pattern. We paid lawyers to get us out of uncomfortable legal situations, or to relieve our legal pain as much as legally possible. We paid doctors to get us out of physical discomfort, or to relieve it as much as medically possible.

Lawyers are most effective when YOU DON’T GO TO TRIAL. A good lawyer works hard at preparation, knowing all the tricks of the trade, knowing the judge and the opposing lawyer. He negotiates and builds up evidence to insure that no trial happens. You plead or settle before court can get into action.

In earlier times doctors worked the same way. Doctors are most effective when you DON’T TAKE DRUGS. A good doctor advised you on diet and exercise and helped you to break bad habits.

Doctors gradually reversed their gradient, starting in the 1920s when pharma began to take over the profession. Now the average doctor follows Parkinson’s law. Failure pays better than success. He tries to diagnose as many druggable conditions as possible, to keep you paying for drugs and surgery and therapy. When you feel good and function well, you’re not druggable. Can’t let that happen! A few good docs still remain, mostly old and retiring or dying.

The comparison is sharpest for one specific type of client who has a name in medicine but not in law. Habitual sickers are called hypochondriacs, while habitual suers don’t seem to have a proper name. (Vexatious litigant is just Latin for habitual suer.) Lawyers hate habitual suers and try to shed them as clients when they recognize the type. Doctors USED TO HATE hypochondriacs and tried to get rid of them. Now doctors MAKE MORE HYPOCHONDRIACS, reaching a climax in 2020 when everyone was LEGALLY REQUIRED to be sick, have symptoms, and take the legally required isolation and muzzles and shots to make us REALLY sick.

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Special note: I linked this article on Upselling above. It’s worth reading! I already knew upselling was an obnoxious trend, but I didn’t realize it’s now THE MOST IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY PART OF MEDICINE until I saw this article via google.