From a Metro section news article about federal criminal charges against doctors prescribing painkillers comes an example of how reporters collaborate with prosecutors to cast accused criminals in the most negative possible light: "Dr. Pietropinto, the psychiatrist who saw people at night in a rented office on Fifth Avenue, wrote thousands of prescriptions for large amounts of oxycodone in exchange for $50 to $100 in cash per visit, the complaint said."
It's highly common for doctors to rent offices rather than own them. It's also highly common for mental health professionals to have some office hours in the evenings so that patients who work or go to school during the daytime are able to see a doctor without missing school or work. There's nothing criminal or nefarious about a psychiatrist seeing people at night in a rented office. Yet the way the article is written, it makes it sound as if renting an office and having evening hours is somehow proof that the doctor is a shady or fly-by-night operator or guilty of a crime.
I'm not defending the doctors — the opioid epidemic is horrible, and going after some doctors for over-prescribing for no legitimate medical reason, if that is indeed what happened here, is a welcome corrective to the error of blaming the whole thing on the Sackler family or on one pharmaceutical company. But if the Times or prosecutors want to demonstrate that the doctors are guilty of a crime, they need to demonstrate that, rather than merely attacking them for doing perfectly legal things, such as renting an office or having evening hours.
In the same category is the article's treatment of the use of cash money. Many modern health insurance policies — including those available under the ObamaCare exchanges that the Times so ardently editorially advocates — feature substantial patient financial responsibility for deductibles, co-pays, and co-insurance. It is not a crime to pay those fees in cash rather than by check or credit card. It may help doctors keep fees lower by avoiding credit-card processing charged by banks. Some patients — the "unbanked," either because of poor credit or illegal immigrant status — may not have credit cards or checking accounts, but may have access to cash. There's a push by the government against cash transactions because they are more difficult for the government to track, but there's no reason for the Times news reporters to cooperate with that.
When the press and prosecutors together pile on like this — faulting people for legal behavior such as renting an office, accepting U.S.-government-issued paper money as tender, having a business that is open in the evenings — it tends to raise doubts about the solidity of their underlying case. If the prosecutors are so sure they have an airtight case against these doctors, why bother with the rest of the nonsense? Maybe it's part of the negotiations leading to an eventual plea deal. But the proper role of the press here is to be a watchdog against prosecutorial excess, not a megaphone for it.
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