No one likes to hear "too bad, deal with it" as the response to their perceived problem, but I'm afraid we as a society are losing the essential skill of "dealing with" accidents, injustices, or just plain bad luck in favor or making someone else shoulder the blame.
Losing it? I personally doubt we had it in the first place. Just look at the rich and very not new history of scapegoating.
Blame the victim rather than admit a problem. Leprosy is a result of your sin. Smallpox however is blameless because it could happen to anyone. Lash out at the vulnerable rather than the source of the problem.
Survival bias is what leads to the perception of this lost golden era. Where all of the pioneer's children are healthy without doctors - nevermind the graves of the seven children and two other wives. We didn't have PTSD before WW1 just ignore all of the self medicating civil war veterans. This tendency isn't a moral component so much as a result of exposure and memory. Possibly a survival bias itself that remembering everything would be really bad for mental health.
Alternative explanation: the quality of care has been declining, for instance because of the ridiculously higher administrative spending in healthcare.
And the thing about painkillers is that they "fix" (to the patients' satisfaction) a hell of a lot of problems ... while bringing in extra money for the doctor and hospital. Any incompetent doctor, or just one that doesn't get the time to diagnose (administrators need to be paid, and that's justified by "productivity" of doctors. Productivity mostly means faster diagnoses. One very effective way to do that, of course, is just to make incomplete diagnoses)
Secondly giving a painkiller is almost never a stupidly wrong decision (unlike taking out a kidney that then in a biopsy turns out to be fully healthy, regardless of how many symptoms matched). So it's ALSO low risk ! And I assure you, there are no words in the universe that cause administrators to drool half as much as the words "low risk".
Didn't we want market-based medicine ? Well, this is one instance where the market based choice is blatantly obvious.
Secondly I fear like now we're seeing the opposite reaction: people are acting against patients that have chronic pain and would not be able to function without constant painkillers. These patients will go back to self-medication (ie. alcohol and/or cocaine, both "decent" painkillers) like people did 50 years ago. It is not a good evolution to replace morphine with alcohol or cocaine.
Just "dealing with" injustices is enabling injustice through. And I am fully willing to help people in accident or bad luck assuming they will help me in bad luck.
I agree, although I think it is important to keep in mind that everyone has different levels at which "deal with it" is appropriate. I've heard people say that about patients fresh out of back surgery, which I find to be ludicrous. I think this should be something between only a person and their doctor.
