Malpractice insurance takes a surprising % of doctor's income. Delivering babies is particularly expensive. It reached the point that the doctor that delivered my babies no longer carries malpractice insurance.
Did he proactively disclose that to you or did it just come up in conversation? Attorneys in many states aren't required to have malpractice insurance but must disclose to clients if their malpractice insurance doesn't meet some minimum standard.
Edit to add that I also suspect the health insurance companies are a big part of driving up the malpractice insurance costs. For example, if there's some sort of error in a routine surgery where the patient is left permanently disabled the patient won't necessarily be the one suing the doctor but the insurance company might go after the doctor's malpractice insurance to "soften the blow" of the additional cost of caring for/insuring the patient.
When my daughter had her babies I recommended my doctor who was pretty young when she delivered my babies. In fact - we were both pregnant together. She was a couple of months behind me. My doctor notified up front that she did not have malpractice insurance.
In fact the insurance situation is pretty hard on working mothers. I know 2 doctors who gave up medicine when they had their children. They wanted to work part time and the insurance structure does not support part time work.
A generation earlier - my father was a family practitioner who gave up delivering babies because the insurance was so high. He had to specialize in internal medicine. That is why we no longer have family practitioners in the US.
Why would you be embarrassed? Most doctors are male, this is a fact. I'm ashamed that your ashamed of this. Sexism is bad but to be ashamed of this, which is clearly not sexism is embarrassing and emasculating.
I think you've meant this as an insult by insinuating my comment somehow made me "less of a man."
Swing & a miss.
As you can clearly discern from my username, I'm a woman, so I don't much care about your opinion of my "manliness."
Perhaps you should ask yourself why you feel the need to attack someone's "masculinity" when you disagree with something they've said rather than discussing your disagreement on the merits.
No i did not mean to be insulting at all. I mean that its emasculating to all men to consider such an assumption that is statistically valid to be shameful.
Assuming that someone is a he instead of a she no matter the circumstance is not in any way shameful. Neither is it the other way around but you'll never hear someone being ashamed that they assumed a doctor was a she instead of a he.
It's only in certain places and modern times where people have to be so careful about non-issues. A mistaken pronoun is a non-issue made into an issue by fear of sexism.
I was (and still am) embarrassed that I assumed any gender at all but I think I understand your point a bit better.
You might be interested to know that there have been several studies that demonstrate how gendered comments like mine do impact gender bias & inequality. We're increasingly discovering that our thoughts shape our language and our language shapes our thoughts. A very thorough explanation of the research can be found here.[1]
