Asklemmy

I can speak to an unfortunate trend where our country (US) imports poorly trained Indian medical doctors who provide poor people with shitty medical care. This is a whole industry. I was exposed to it while working in the medical imaging field and I'm sure that it kills poor people in this country every day. Both of the most blatant criminal abuses coming from medical doctors that I was personally close to (one committed insurance fraud by performing unnecessary heart surgery on patients who DID NOT NEED IT the other sexually assaulted women on his examining table) also were, sadly, Indians.

It's MUCH easier to get a medical degree in India than it is in America, if you're high caste. Meaning high caste students in India who would NOT pass medical school in America become doctors all the time and then immigrate.

Once you have that MD after your name, in terms of legally establishing a private practice in America, your Indian MD is just as good as one from Harvard or Colombia. And Insurance companies FUCKING LOVE YOU because you charge 70% what the guys from Harvard or Colombia charge. They have programs in the Insurance industry to help reach out to immigrating Indian doctors and get them into network with the Insurance providers.

So I had a job travelling all over the US setting up, repairing and supporting medical imaging computers for private practices and what I saw in 4 out of 5 Indian owned clinics was

• Dirty facilities.
• Old, poorly maintained equipment (I have stories about having to support 5.25 inch floppy drives in 2010).

I also saw

• People sent away with unanswered questions / incomplete diagnosis because the doctor only had 20 minutes for each patient.
• Doctors who spoke English so poorly their patients could not understand what they were being told (especially when said doctors were treating Mexican people who spoke English as a second language anyway).
• A doctor who berated an autistic woman because she was moving too slowly and he had lots of other patients to see.
• Not to mention doctors failing to understand some of the basic functions of the medical imaging tech I was supporting for them in ways that were disturbing like "You have the tools here to provide a higher level of care to your patients but you DON'T KNOW HOW to use them."
• Also lots of doctors that were arrogant and dismissive towards me, a highly skilled engineering professional.

I got to contrast this with a couple of black doctors in the South who had shabby clinics in old buildings and old poorly maintained equipment but ENTIRELY different attitudes towards their patients and LOTS of white and Asian doctors who run the kind of clean, modern clinics I myself as a white collar professional from a privileged background had previously taken for granted.

I want to be VERY clear this is NOT a race thing. It is a socio-economic / cultural problem.