Sometimes it is. But turfing them out (hopefully) before senility sets in does nothing for the decades of venality.

General politics and lower judges is a different thing from Scotus judges. There’s only 9, and they’re under scrutiny. Elsewhere, yeah, we should do something, even if it’s wrong.

See Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond. Sometime’s it’s senility. In New York, mandatory retirement for judges has been the law since 1846. The utility of simple rules is that it avoids a transfer of discretion to the professional guild necessary to implement the more complicated rules.

“Mandatory age limits for retirement…”

FDR was coping a plea, claiming polio. His issue was more serious, and it actively killed him … polio was no longer a problem.

The problem of too-old ranking-figures rolls-in with a public ‘right-to-know’ … even with a robust-seeming JFK, who also hid serious issues, and was very young.

Simply requiring the loss of medical privacy would ‘catch’ both the JFKs, and the doddering Judges… without hardwiring an age-limit into the Code.

Overwhelmingly, though, realistically, our real problem is venality, not senility. Term limits are about breaking up cabals, regardless of age or fitness. That’s the biggie.

Most of the primary care docs I know are unhappy with their practice. I taught medical students for 15 years and worked part time with young docs. I am so happy that I don't have to deal with it. I know a number of older docs, not as old as I am but with grown kids and student loans paid. There are quitting all insurance and Medicare and practicing for cash. Over head drops 70%.

You need to take from your doctor what they have to offer you, and accept that some things aren’t their stock-in-trade.

The wretched thing nowadays is that they’re all enslaved to computer terminals. One of the more recent physicals I’ve had he hardly looked at me, just typing away at the electronic medical record. Premedical study sums to a couple of academic years. Then you have four calendar years of medical school. Then you have 3-6 years worth of crazy hours for your residency. Then you’ve got two years of fellowship. All that, and the financing system we have now deploys these professionals as … data entry clerks. A primary care physician of my acquaintance tells me that he was debarred from making use of the transcription service by his employers. Transcription’s for specialists only, just like coffee’s for closers. So, he has to enter data in an electronic medical record while trying to interview patients. And, of course, the electronic medical record is designed by programmers in accordance with their own shticks, screw you doctor-losers. He said this maneuver triple the time he had to allot to record keeping, then they bitched that he wasn’t seeing enough patients. Memo to Joe Blow, MD. Don’t ever work for Carillion.

The medical oncologist tells us, ‘the next patient I’m to see has had a recurrence after 20 years. I need to warn you this happens sometimes. About 2% per year’. The literature we consulted indicated that the annual recurrence rate declines quite slowly with time for stage 1 cancers and resolves into a constant. For the stage 2 and stage 3 cancers, it’s quite elevated to begin with, but most of the distinction between the later stage and the stage 1 rate evaporates after 5-6 years. After about 15 years, the probability of a recurrence is the same w/o regard to the stage of the cancer initially. That it’s a constant is distressing, because that means you’re just never over it.

History is a great guide, not to be slightly. Agreed.

In the ’60s-70s, bombs were going off in the USA everywhere, over dozen a day, thousands a year. That should have been addressed differently; more pro-actively, ‘like you say’.

Three-year old on the floor kicking & screaming, turning purple? Not a big problem.

Strapping dude big enough to hunt bear with a switch, crazed, ‘on’ something and maybe armed? Could be a problem. Maybe time to call in the cavalry, or mount-up right here & now.

Big part of good conflict-management, is ascertaining what is & what isn’t our conflict … and guarding against mission-creep. Democrats doing the 3yo on the floor (camera crews packed all around), best addressed ‘minimally’. They start eg making bombs, different conflict.

As it stands today, “When the opponent is busy digging himself into a hole, don’t interrupt”. They’re hurting themself a lot more than they’re hurting us.

Let ’em turn purple.

Oliver Sacks, the author, died of an ophthalmic melanoma 9 years after treatment.

Yes, I think that physicians can have very different policies on how to deal with telling patients their prognoses. It’s a difficult area, not the least because all the data (such as, for example, on 5-year survival rates) is necessarily old and doesn’t often reflect current approaches.