Like many Americans, I suddenly find myself without insurance, and therefore this whole discussion is academic to me. I have no choice but to be informed and responsible about my own health.

But when I did have insurance, in spite of the fact that as many doctors were knowledgeable and decent as professionals in other disciplines, I met mostly with arrogance, disdain, misinformation, and neglect. In part this is a cultural artifact, the notion that as mere ordinary citizens we cannot possibly have any meaningful knowledge about our situations: Our bodies are like our autos--leave them to the experts. Your health does not belong to you, it belongs to (I love this current marketing locution) "a medical professional."

The doctors who have disagreed with this article have persistently portrayed patients as helpless panicky hypochondriacs. Hello? If that's mostly who you are seeing, okay, but a lot of us are smarter than you, booby. We can tell the difference, as many have pointed out, in a credible source of information and a paranoid personal blog.

I had a couple of doctor friends (had being the important word) who made a point of expressing contempt for all their patients. Surely some of their patients were intelligent and decent, but to hear these practitioners tell it, they were all "bezoars"--a word that doctors should recognize, and a word that fully expresses their contempt. Way too many doctors feel this way.

They suffer the disease of professional arrogance. This attitude is death to any pro, whether a comic doing stand-up or a writer doing a novel or a (gag) journalist. If you feel you are superior to your clients, buddy you are in the wrong damn business. Get out of it and do something where you will cause less damage. I mean it. You don't fool anybody. We can smell your arrogance a mile away.

I thank this doctor for this honest report. Wish more were as openminded.

And for Craig what's-his-name (I don't feel the necessity to go back and look up his last name, because he can't even refer to us as patients--no, we are "ppls"), the author of the LOLZ letter--bub, your attitude reeks. I don't know of anybody who loves up insurance companies, or for that matter trial lawyers either. In my scale of honor and decency, lawyers and doctors rate just barely above politicians, and lawyers just barely above doctors, and that only because they generally do less damage. Both are professions which, instead of helping us, we are forced to resort to by the laws and conditions of the times. Believe me, if I can avoid going to law I do. And if I can avoid going to the doctor or the hospital I do. Hey, if I break a leg or get a toxic disease--by all means, the pros know their stuff. But I would no more depend on a doctor for my day to day well being than I would depend on a preacher for my morality.

Eating right and exercising helps a lot, by the way. Way more cost effective than "medical professionals."