If my Dad was alive today, he would be very sad, in his latter days he was very concerned about Socialized Medicine. He predicted this day would come, way back in the fifties.
He practiced medicine much of his life. He was in General Practice for many years, did house calls, made his "rounds" at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, and had office calls in the afternoon and evening.
We had our home and office together, so I was brought up with medicine and a "good" doctors life. I spent a lot of time riding around in the car with him as he made house calls. I saw all sorts of injuries brought to his office. People didn't run to the hospital in those days, they went to see "doc." who probably brought them into the world as well as take care of all their aches and pains.
His General Practice was getting to be too much for him, so in 1943 he went in to OBGYN, and moved his office to an office building in downtown Dayton. We left the old, beautiful home and office, and moved to another section of Dayton.
I will never forget his last night as a GP, so many people, friends, relatives and patients came to pay their respects, the waiting room and our living room were both full. There was one doorway between our living room and his office, and I will never forget, his last patient was gone, his nurse had left, he "locked up," and came in to the living room.
He was exhausted physically and mentally, from all of the emotion of leaving something he had devoted his life to. He was not just their doctor, he was their minister, their friend, their confidant and their Doctor. He was "Doc" to most of them.
He sat in "his" chair, a gray tilt-back recliner, and he cried. I had never seen him cry. I remember I just quietly went to bed. Would your Doctor, today, cry, because he was no longer going to care for you? I doubt if he or she even know your name, till it comes up on the computer.
In the late fifties, he was President of the county Medical Society, and in his last speech, he foresaw, and predicted the inevitable happening, Socialized Medicine, and we saw the door opening to it on Sunday, March 22, 2010.
He predicted a lowering of the Quality of Medical care, he predicted understaffed hospitals, insurance abuse, and all of the problems that we are seeing now, and will see in the future. A minor thing, but I doubt a patient ever saw him wearing anything but a suit and tie. I was visited in my room by a Doctor, wearing blue jeans and a golf shirt. What does your doctor wear?
He would be very sad today, Socialism has reared its ugly head.
