The white coat: Is it really going away?

There's an essay in Salon.com by Rahul Parikh, a pediatrician in San Francisco, on the disappearance of the white coat. He postulates a number of reasons for this and draws parallels to the decline in public opinion of physicians. In essence, patients aren't dazzled anymore by the magic of the white coat as they have become more empowered and participatory in their care. All of this is good in my opinion. But I wonder if Dr. Parikh's observations may have a geographic bias. While the coat may be disappearing on the west coast, it's still alive and well on the east coast. Many trends move from west to east, so maybe in a few years, they'll disappear here too.