W. Va. Doctors Strike Over Insurance: “Surgeons at four hospitals began a strike Wednesday to protest malpractice insurance costs, and most operations in northern West Virginia were canceled or were being moved. In Pennsylvania, a similar walkout was averted.” Yahoo! News Years ago, the hospital where I did my psychiatric residency was one of only two of which we were aware where the house officers (interns and residents) had a collective bargaining unit. I could not have foreseen then that doctors everywhere would grow to feel as much powerless cogs in the medical machine as house officers did then. I recalled our ‘house officers’ association’ only recently as the evident discontent of my colleagues has grown and just recently had a conversation with a labor lawyer speculating about whether we would see efforts to unionize doctors. Lo and behold. As a purist and a moralist, however, the concept of a strike seems inimical to my idea of why people should go into medicine.

And, while we’re in the First-Do-No-Harm-Hah! Dept, “The state (of Massachusetts) will stop paying for artificial limbs, dentures, and eyeglasses for nearly half a million residents today in the most far-reaching reduction in medical care for the poor in more than a decade.” Boston Globe