Health Access Forum

For a man five feet nine inches tall Doctor Joe was still a commanding presence.  It wasn’t that he dressed well.  Oh, he bought suits from Roos Bros. and Hart, [ … ]

In those rare times when Doctor Joe could get away for a vacation, he liked to keep his feet as close to the ground as possible.  No, he never rode a motorcycle, but when hunting did ride horses and mules (there weren’t any ATV’s in Doctor Joe’s lifetime!).  His preferred mode of travel was by […]

  There is a great deal of truth to the statement that “doctors make the worst medical patients.  An Example:  for most of his life Doctor Joe was overweight.  Despite [ … ]

You have to realize that health care as it is delivered in the US today is far more specialized than when Doctor Joe practiced medicine.  Surgeons hadn’t learned how to [ … ]

Now, Doctor Joe grew up on a ranch just outside the city limits of Murphy’s, California.  That’s in Calaveras County set in the foothills of the Sierras.  His one and [ … ]

 GEORGE: To get the flavor of a doctor whose practice was made up of many “blue-collar” workers, I want to introduce you to George, a feisty, hard-drinking patient of Doctor [ … ]

Doctor Joe was my father, Joseph J. Raffetto, MD, who practiced in San Francisco, California from 1931 until his death in 1973. That Doctor Joe became an excellent medical practitioner [ … ]

Doctor Joe loved the big colorful dahlias growing at some of this patient’s home.  Now dahlias are a favorite food of garden snails. Despite an ongoing attack on the snails, [ … ]