Patients getting infected because somebody didn't wash their hands is an abomination, we can agree on that. This thread was originally about decision-making po

Patients getting infected because somebody didn't wash their hands is an abomination, we can agree on that. This thread was originally about decision-making power being shifted from doctors (M.D.s) to insurance companies, administrators, regulators, laywers, and even patients themselves. Your first comment suggested that this is a good thing because those same M.D.s kill 1/3 of all Americans (and as a corollary, the other parties involved plus the other healthcare providers that outnumber M.D.s many-to-one kill nobody). I think it's pretty suspect that the linked page cherry-picks its numbers, rather than trying to assemble them all from a single source which has taken some care not to double-count. Granted, such a source may not exist, but essentially the death toll for each cause X is taken from a paper which is trying to make a big deal out of X. The fact that those numbers sound fishy is orthogonal to the fact that I don't think they would be any better if the power to make treatment decisions is taken from those best equipped to make it. And all of that is orthogonal to the fact that the linked page does not even attempt to show this, so it doesn't really seem to support the point you were making with that citation.