So SD, in the event you end up with a major medical condition that requires intensive medical care, and the odds are that you will at some point in your life, are you just going to avoid medical care when it is necessary? I, of course, realize you certainly can, but I wouldn't call that particularly the best choice in the world; yours to make though I suppose.

You realize your plan to sue and sue doctors is the reason so much in the medical establishment is run the way it is, right? It won't fix things. It will just perpetuate what is already happening.

What makes you believe your friend is "cowed" by the medical community? Maybe it's just a sort of acceptance. What should he/she do differently? Just walk away without treatment? Just say, you aren't treating me the way I like, so I'll just go ahead and go without treatment because I don't like your attitude?

Yes, many medical professionals have huge egos. Yes, sometimes they treat patients badly because of those egos. But ironically, sometimes those physicians with those huge egos are remarkably gifted at treated the medical problems in their speciality. My husband has run into some horribly egotistical specialists (usually surgeons) over the years who completely infuriated us both with their attitudes, but they were truly gifted experts in their fields, and as a patient, walking away from that expertise isn't always an option. We'd rather have an excellent surgeon with a crappy bedside manner than a mediocre surgeon who is all sweetness and rainbows any day.

Yes, we all wish to find a combination of both expertise and attitude in a perfect world, but when you are seriously ill, you need the treatment and sometimes you just deal with the jerky attitude knowing its the treatment and recovery that is your goal; you aren't looking to take that doctor home with you anyway, so sometimes you can just deal.

I've met some lawyers that way too. (Just kidding . . . well, not exactly.)