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Notes -
Did y'all talk about this story by Aaron Sibarium earlier this month?
Meet the Little-Known Activist Group That Has Tens of Thousands of Doctors Registering Patients To Vote
The article starts by describing a psychiatric institute in Pennsylvania that started an initiative to register voters.
Since the initiative is in a medical institution it must be justified, because you can't just waltz into medicine and decide voting is important. No, these institutes are bound to a sacred oath that commits their staff to the health of patients. By necessity, voting must become good for patients.
After the starting the voter registration initiative, the Pennsylvania hospital "has turned to the nonprofit Vot-ER, which develops "nonpartisan civic engagement tools" for "every corner of the healthcare system." This is where my lack of strong objection turns into a fully committed objection.
The basic gist is that medical staff wear a QR code around their neck and point patients to it in order to register. A 2021 executive order encouraged this behavior, but Vot-ER's site only cites the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 in its FAQ page as its legal reason to exist. Medical professionals have the greenlight to seek out patients and proactively attempt to register them to vote.
I did not vet every link in the article, but I did look at a few, and as far as I can tell most of the quotes are presented in a fair enough, if biased, context. There are professionals willing to say stuff like these bits:
I think if voting cures depression that's great, but I suspect voting does not cure depression and Debra Koss is not offering a medical opinion.
I watched most of a 20 minute talk from the founder of Vot-ER from 2023. It was very heavy on the voting aspect, the benefits of voting, and the benefit of voter registration. Not so much attention given to the medical aspect, ethical questions, or potential impacts. I briefly trolled through Vot-ER's site and, as far as I could tell, they don't provide any studies supporting the idea their program has significant positive medical benefits to patients. Which I would have figured would be necessary. If a doctor is doing something to me as a doctor it should improving my health.
If a person comes in with a broken arm and you offer to register them to vote on their way out I think this carries ethical questions but, fine, whatever. When the program extends to mental health institutions and picks up a motto of Voting Is Great For You Actually Because Anecdote this seems like it should be made an issue.
I'm no expert, but I am not under the impression that dedicating more attention to politics is the best path to a healthy mental state. I am under the impression that politics, particularly of the national sort, in this day and age appears to degrade many people's mental well being. Encouraging people to vote is not necessarily damaging to their psyche, but a focus on voting might be a gateway drug. An organization, staffed by party operatives or affiliates, pushing a political non-profits goals onto medical staff in hospitals is wrong.
Like ballot harvesting I think it's sleazy. I can accept sleaziness in politics. People accept that politics is not holy and sacred, but dirty. Importing it into medicine, which I know is not new, seems particularly bad though. Initiatives like this drives resentment when, on the other hand, I am inundated by messaging that claims one party is holy, good, and joyous democracy lovers-- while this party engages in what appears to be deeply cynical, irreverent electioneering. I guess I'll accept sleazy politics in medicine as well.
Time to kill some of my opsec. I have personally argued with Deb Koss at a conference in D.C. telling her to cut this shit out.
I won't say much about it but she (and others like her are) exactly as you'd expect.
It's not as worrying in the disciplines like Psych (hers), ID, and Peds where people are overwhelmingly left leaning but these advocacy people are still DEMANDING trainees participate in advocacy and politics (and it's always one specific kind of advocacy). Trainees who can't say no without negatively impacting their careers. It's gross and deeply unethical.
Furthermore these idiots seem fundamentally incapable of understanding how damaging this is to the long term health of the profession.
It's no different than any woke ideological capture but with a very damaging set up levers (ensuring incoming medical students are very left leaning, brainwashing them during vulnerable periods like residency, and mandating leftist political advocacy as part of educational curricula).
I hate it.
If it's any consolation, I'm sure right-leaning students handle this the way we always have: go through the motions, then make fun of it all behind their backs when we're hanging out on our own time.
But it is worrying. What separated us from the Soviets during the Cold War was you didn't have to be an activist to do things like medicine.
They do still exist but changes to the pre-matriculation "requirements" have decreased their numbers, and being "outed" as conservative or woke-questioning will kill your social life so they tend to be super locked down.
Add on the requirements to publicly go through the motions during times of profound stress and exhaustion.... you get people who legitimately convert or experience permanent changes.
Remember that medical school clinicals and residency is not far off from outright torture in a lot of ways and people get 1984'ed while going through this.
Salary and taxes walk some people over a few decades but it is less than it used to be.
Explain
For a few decades Medicine has felt angsty about claims of bad bedside manner in practicing physicians (never mind that this is as much about inherent pressures in the field and foreign trained doctors as it is about individual physician temperaments). The solution was to deemphasize grades, MCAT, and other traditional measures of academic success (and also research prowess). As we've pushed into the woke era this has turned more into looking for students to be engaged in specific types of volunteering and political advocacy. About ten years ago the MCAT was heavily updated to include woke content (although obviously this was pre "woke" era).
Additionally affirmative action* has gotten more and more egregious - troublesome given drop out rates and early retirement/exit from the field in some of those demos. On a less official note you'll schools pushing for "does this student match our mission" behind closed doors in admissions committee meeting. Of course this primarily impacts people from less affluent backgrounds and less prominent schools, since people with good backgrounds manage to slide in as usual.
Between affluent American children naturally becoming more woke and deliberate fingers on the scale with respect to who gets admitted theirs been less complaints about explicitly woke curriculums (sometimes removing traditional educational content and replacing those content hours on more trans health or whatever) some of which gets to the point where even the supporters are like...eesh man that's a lot.
The first part of the medical boards (Step 1) was also made pass/fail, which was sold as a way to increase diversity since minorities didn't do well on it, but was basically a move by top tier medical schools to make the bottom of their class look better, which absolutely worked leaving talented people from mid and low tier medical schools unable to differentiate themselves and move up a tier for residency. Anti-meritocratic bullshit.
*I'm going to throw women in here even though they are better candidates by most metrics but the problem is that they have a tendency to eat a training slot and then get pregnant a year or two into their career and then never return to the work force or work reduced hours, which is a huge issue with doctor allocation and shortage problems.
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