[saghm]

This seems like an especially easy trap to fall into specifically for medical patients (and their families). Everything about it, from the specialized knowledge of symptoms and ailments that aren't easy to reason about as a non-expert, the subtle details around different dosages of similar-sounding medications (e.g all of the accounting around "morphine units" detailed in the article), the Kafkaesque insurance bureaucracy often making it extremely difficult to switch providers and essentially impossible for mere mortals to understand the actual cost of procedures they're getting make it a perfect scenario for exploitation. In a situation where you or a family has (or is told they have) a deadly illness, those of us without medical training don't have the expertise to be able to verify what we're told, let alone take any steps to try to prevent severe pain or death without help from a doctor. What alternatives do people have to advocate for themselves or their family other than having to just trust what they're told? The article mentions that the hospital wouldn't share the results of a review or even confirm that a review existed of the death of a 16-year-old due to "confidentiality laws" when asked by _her own parents_.

Like plenty of other circumstances where someone is able to build a cult of personality, it's not someone having such extraordinary charisma that they can convince people to reject reality; they might be above average in their persuasiveness, but their real skill is identifying situations where people are vulnerable and don't have any alternatives. In this case, being the only oncologist anywhere in the region gave both his patients _and_ the hospital where he worked no obvious alternative than continuing to buy into whatever he told them, until someone from the outside without circumstances making him susceptible was able to push hard enough to force action (at no insignificant personal cost; the outside doctor who came in and built up enough momentum to force the unscrupulous doctor out is still dealing with a personal lawsuit alleging defamation despite the case against the hospital for defamation and wrongful termination being thrown out).