ACTION

from the desk of Jonathan A. Herbst MD

Dr. Herbst is in solo practice of internal medicine for the past 26 years in his home town of Port Chester, NY. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia, B.A. as an Echols Scholar, cum laude, and then the Medical College of Virginia. He served as a captain in the US Army Medical Corps for 4 years, and also has 6 years of Emergency Room experience.

Forty years ago, when I was applying to medical school, America was a different nation. We made the world's best cars. Anything made in Japan was considered inferior junk compared to our nation's wonderful products, and people were terribly proud to be Americans. We were the best. And everyone admired if not loved us.

To be practicing American Medicine in the 1950' through the 1980's was to be in heaven, on the top of the world. The prestige was enormous. Entry to the ranks medical Americana was amazingly competitive. The year that I applied for medical school, there were 26 highly qualified American applicants for every available slot. Becoming a physician was considered the highest and most difficult goal any high school or college student might strive for. Physicians not only made a decent living, but were very respected in society. Only the best of the best in high school actually made it through an extensive weeding out process to become a doctor after many years of hard work and intense non-stop competition. We were the brains. We excelled to such a point, that people whose societies were not so blessed as ours came to America from all over the world, to benefit from what we offered humanity in our exceptional healing arts.

No more. No longer do the best of our high schools brains seek medicine. Rather they have been told by their own doctors, parents and teachers to avoid it at all costs, because it is a path now to an eternal slavery to an insane, incompetent and cruel bureaucracy ruled by government and managed care. Now, in the Mental Hospitals, Medical Hospitals and Emergency Rooms of America we are ministered to by uninterested and uncaring foreigners who cannot relate to our way of life, or our concerns about death. People from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan and the like, who have no concept of how to communicate, or commiserate with the American patient. In fact, like that terrorist murderer Army psychiatrist Dr. Hasan from the Fort Hood massacre, they may even hate us.

Much of this change has been propelled by urban hospitals desire to obtain cheap labor in the form of large numbers of foreign resident physicians to take care of our urban and indigent populations on the public dole for this and everything else. In American medicine, the American Medical Association, which only claims the membership of 17% of American physicians because of its markedly far left views, has supported this massive influx of foreign doctors so as to continue serve those ne'er do wells so dependent on this curse of welfare. Needless to point out, those miscreants who cling to that soul robbing occupation of nothingness, pay no taxes , but take, take and take from the rest of us. And, they almost always vote Democratic, the exclusive party of nonsensical entitlements. Thus, the reason d'etre for the alliance between the AMA and the Democratic Party and Obama.

In the Emergency room, we see the societal rot daily. A grand parade of the dregs of humanity parades through the ER on we call "Welfare Weekend", that bimonthly federal holiday when welfare checks are dispensed, supplying a waterfall of drugs, booze and ammunition to the misbegotten. The Taxpayer, of course pays. The Knife and Gun Club is in full display. The drinks are on you.

Meanwhile, in the physician's office, Obamacare has begun to make our lives interesting. In my next piece, I will discuss how Obamacare and the ever-expanding government burdens and regulations are crippling your nation's medical care.