Do you think medical personnel will discriminate if they feel the patient did something to deserve the illness

Question

For instance, a smoker with a sinus infection, or someone who has no or poor health insurance?

Answer 1

It has become normal to not hold people responsible for their actions. It would be unthinkable for a modern health-care professional to be judgemental about whether a sinus infection was brought on by "bad" behavior.

Answer 2

Discriminate in what way? By withholding medical services?

That would be highly unlikely, given that medical personnel are usually well educated.

Answer 3

Not suppose to but it definitely happens.

Examples I have seen.  

A cop and a crook both were shot in a gun fight.  They are brought in to the same small town ER.   Both are in equally bad shape and their lives hang by a thread.    The hospital has enough personnel to save one of them.  So they do triage and save the cop.  

A bad asthmatic who smokes comes into the ER in as bad a shape as he can be.   They have to intubate him and put him on a ventilator and send him off to a major medical center with an ICU.  He has to go by helicopter due to the distance and how bad off he is.   He has no money so the state ends up having to pick up the check.   It takes 4 days in the ICU/ hospital to save him and get him in good enough shape that he can go back home. He is told to quit smoking.  He does not and the whole cycle repeats.   Eventually he does it one time too many and the helicopter can not come due to weather and they decide not to even try to do it by ambulance.  

Soldier with a bad knee gets surgery.   He refuses to do the exercises afterwards because they hurt.  So he gets big adhesions and the knee will not bend.   So they bring him back to surgery,  put him to sleep and break all the adhesions loose.   And again he refuses to do the exercises because they hurt.   So they do it one last time.  Same thing happens.  So he gets kicked out of the Army not for physical disability with a medical discharge but with a general discharge under honorable conditions.  The doctors felt he rendered himself unfit for duty.  Plus they were really pissed at him.  

General practice doctor has a patient with asthma who will not quit smoking.  Doctor tries everything and still the patient needs oxygen all the time and still keeps smoking.  So he refers the patient to an asthma specialist and tells the patient that is her doctor now.  And he refuses to see her after that for any kind of problem.   And he is the only doctor within 50 miles.  

Maybe these are not cases of the medical people thinking the patient deserved the illness,  but it was cases where the patients contribution to the illness made the medical people give less than what they could.  

No one likes to bust their butts trying to save someone when the person will not even help you do it.